#548 | The Salem Witch Trials

In 1881, a 30-second gunfight in Tombstone, Arizona made Wyatt Earp a legend of the Wild West. Earp was a gambler, a lawman, a fugitive, and later a showman who told his own legend for cash. So who fired first at the OK Corral, and how did Hollywood turn a frontier opportunist in ...  Show more

In 1975, a French mercenary landed in the Comoros, a chain of small islands off East Africa, and decided he was going to run the place. Bob Denard staged four coups, converted to Islam, built a farm, and controlled the country from the shadows for over a decade. It was a story of ...  Show more

In 1692, the village of Salem in Massachusetts was the location of the infamous Salem witch trials. Hundreds of innocent people were accused of witchcraft and being witches. People were executed, tortured, and imprisoned. In this Halloween special episode of Thinking in English, ...  Show more

For more than two centuries, between the late 1400s and early 1700s, a terror of witches gripped Europe. From Scotland to Spain, thousands of people were accused, tortured and executed. But as the hysteria faded in Europe, it crossed the Atlantic. In 1692, in New England, it took ...  Show more

More than 200 accused, 20 executed and a village plagued with hysteria. Were the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and 1693 the work of superstition, a power struggle, fungus or actual witchcraft? What makes them stand out in the history of witch trials?

In this episode, Do ...

It was the summer of 1692, and a woman named Bridget Bishop was the first woman to face the hangman’s rope while neighbors and old friends looked on and cheered - but this execution would certainly not be the last in the town of Salem, Masschussets, and over the next few months, ...  Show more