HeyJaredRicky's Historical Tidbits Podcast
A show that highlights interesting history around the United States in a vignette styled format. Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ricky-mortensen/support
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 3
- Latest publication
- Sep 19, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Aug 31, 2026
Latest episodes
CHOLERAFORNIA: The Gold Rush Epidemic That Emptied a City (opens the original)
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In October 1850, California celebrated statehood while cholera moved through its ports, rivers, and boomtowns. In Sacramento, the disease emptied streets, overwhelmed a makeshift hospital, killed hundreds, and helped turn one physician into a pioneer of public health. Picture this: you have just completed the worst road trip of your life, except much of it happened on foot. It is 1850. You crossed Panama by canoe, mule, and mud because you heard there was gold in California and wanted to arrive
The Day Sacramento Shot Their Mayor (opens the original)
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Picture Sacramento in the summer of 1850. Gold was just struck up in the hills, thousands of hopefuls were flooding in every single month, and you had managed to put up a simple wood-frame house on a muddy patch of ground near the river. It was nothing fancy—just rough boards and a leaky roof—but you built it with your own hands. As far as you were concerned, it was yours. Then one afternoon, the sheriff shows up with a stack of papers and tells you to pack your bags and get off the lot. You hav
The Great Diamond Hoax of 1872: How Two Kentucky Cousins Fooled San Francisco’s Richest Men (opens the original)
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Imagine you’re a banker in San Francisco in 1872. You survived the Gold Rush. You made good money off the Comstock silver boom. Everybody in town thinks you’re one of the sharpest guys in California. Then one night, two rough-looking prospectors walk into a mine broker’s office with a leather sack full of uncut gems. “Diamonds,” they say. “From a field out West. Can’t tell you where.” Within two years, men just like you will pour the equivalent of millions of dollars into that secret field. And
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