Two Close Calls

07/01/24 • 46 min

1 Listener

The American Miracle with Michael Medved

Within the span of fourteen fateful months in the early 1930s, two bloody American encounters nearly killed both the remarkable individuals most essential for Allied victory in World War II. As a pedestrian, Winston Churchill barely survived a life-threatening encounter with a speeding car on New York's Fifth Avenue while Franklin Roosevelt, as president-elect, came within inches of an assassin's bullet, nearly ending the FDR administration before it even began. Both survivors always acknowledged the providential nature of their escapes from doom, and leading historians and even acclaimed novelists have speculated about how shifts of literal inches might have altered the fate of all of humanity. This podcast provides the astonishing story of two close calls that saved the world.

The American Miracle is part of the Airwave podcast network. Contact [email protected] to inquire about sponsoring this podcast.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The American Miracle is part of the Airwave podcast network. Contact [email protected] to inquire about sponsoring this podcast.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Previous Episode

Cigars

At the height of the Civil War, a weary Union soldier picks up the three cigars in an open field. They turn out to be the most consequential cigars in the history of the world. and they give President Abraham Lincoln the sign that he has been waiting for to free 3,000,000 enslaved people.

The American Miracle is part of the Airwave podcast network. Contact [email protected] to inquire about sponsoring this podcast.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Next Episode

Golden Timing

1 Recommendations

On a crisp January morning in the forested foothills of the Sierra Nevada, in part of the remote Mexican province of California, a frontier carpenter spotted a few shiny pebbles in a drainage ditch. Little did he know that in the same week he validated his discovery as unusually pure gold, the suddenly valuable territory passed from Mexican possession to that of the United States. The result: the most rapid mass migration in American history and a transformation that led the young nation to a fateful rise in economic power. As one observer noted at the time, "It had been so ordered by Providence that the gold might not be discovered until California should be in the hands of the Americans.”

The peace treaty with Mexico that ended the Mexican War was negotiated by one of the great unsung heroes of our history, Nicholas Trist. A former aide to James Madison and Andrew Jackson, married to Thomas Jefferson's granddaughter, Trist defied a president and risked arrest. As chief clerk of the State Department, with no official sanction, he broke every rule to make the monumental deal that changed the world.

The American Miracle is part of the Airwave podcast network. Contact [email protected] to inquire about sponsoring this podcast.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices