Flight Made Wright

In this week's episode, we take to the skies! In our opening diary, we travel to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where a lifeguard witnesses flight history while helping the Wright brothers. Mark then discusses the brother's strong bond, ingenuity, and obsession with flight. We also witness triumph and tragedy during the world's first aerial exhibitions. 

In our What if? scenario, Mark imagines the tragic death of Orville Wright. With the close family devastated, it will be Katharine, their younger sister, who steps up to help Willbur run the family business. She grows the company becomes a super pilot in her own right and even helps train the next crop of American pilots. 

In our final diary, we will be Katharine's co-pilot on one of her flights over New York.

Hit play, and get ready to soar.

Transcript

Introduction
Hello, my name is Mark Bouffard. Welcome to What If World History?

Like you, I share a passion for civilizations, cultures, and stories of the past. This show looks at the epic events that sewed the fabric of our history and sculpted the world we now know. And it imagines: What If they happened a little bit differently?

Would it change the outcome? What might the “new history” look like? 

I invite you to explore the possibilities with me. 

Before we begin, I’d like to take a quick minute to ask you to drop a review on the podcast in whatever app you are listening. You can also follow What if World History? on Facebook and LinkedIn. We are @spin_history on Twitter, and hypothetical history on Instagram.

If this is your first time listening, we will explore events as they happened in our history, then we will envision an alternative timeline and show how it will shape a new future. Along the way, we will put you in the shoes of some of the key players through a series of Diaries. 

Let’s take a trip.

Our episode today is:
Flight Made Wright: The Story of the Wright Brothers
In this episode we will look at Wilbur and Orville Wright’s relentless pursuit for powered flight. And we ponder a history in which Orville Wright does not survive a crash that in real life killed his passenger, a young Army lieutenant. And as a result, a brilliant, driven member of the Wright family, their sister Katharine, will step up to help Wilbur make history and keep America on track to maintain aerial superiority.


The Birth of Aviation
John Daniels, Patrolman 
Kill Devils Lifeguard Station, North Carolina
December 17, 1903

The white-capped waves pounded against the sandy, rock strewn shore. The stiff breeze pushed the waves violently against the beach and battered the small wooden shed that served as the lifeguard station. John Daniels was a patrolman with more than 10 years experience with keen vision, a well-muscled physique and a serious gaze.

Right now that gaze was fixed, not on the water, but on two men who stood among a flock of birds with their hands outstretched mimicking the flight of the Avocets, Kestrels, Plovers and Widgens. Daniels knew the men, who were brothers, well. 

Each summer, for the past four years, Wilbur and Orville Wright had been coming down to the wind swept beaches of Kitty Hawk to set up their shack below the only rise in this flat sand bar. It was called Kill Devils Hill.

The brothers kept mostly to themselves in the sturdy wood shed and hangar where they kept their glider. It resembled a kids toy made up of a thin wood frame and cream colored canvas wings. When they first arrived in Kitty Hawk, they kept mostly to themselves. 

It took a few visits, and some help building their shed, for the brothers to open up and learn to trust their beach neighbors. Daniels once told his wife about the Wright brothers: “They hadn’t been down there long before we just naturally learned to love’em--such nice boys wasting their time playing with kites and watching gulls fly. There were such smart boys--natural-born mechanics--and could do anything they put their hands to.”

Daniels was surprised at the change in the brothers once they dropped their guard. Chatty, quick witted, and always talking about their ideas, even if their passion sometimes turned to arguments between the two. 

He had never seen two men of one mind, and who’s shared mind was so focused, even consumed, with the mechanics of flight. Daniels could see this year was different. The Wrights had brought an aluminum engine they had made, and spent the last few weeks installing the motor, propellers, levers and a launch system. 

It was morning, and Daniels and the other lifeguards stopped in to wish them well on their project. The brothers quickly corralled the group of hearty men to help out with their test. He had no idea today he was about to witness one of the greatest moments in human history.

The Wright brothers rolled their contraption up the hill to their launch track. They moved away from the group and talked quietly to each other. They moved about the plane, and in low murmurs, talked about each component. 

Seemingly happy with the walkaround, Orville laid face down on the glider. Daniels noticed how calm and focused his demeanor was, and wondered if he could have remained as steadfast.

Wilbur and one of the other guards helped prime and start the motor. Daniels was asked to help steady one of the wings of the flyer. With the engine and propellers reaching a cacophony of whirring and pounding, Orville released the brake and shot forward. Daniels and Wilbur ran with the flyer but were soon outpaced by its momentum.

They dropped away from holding the wings and watched Orville move steadily down the track and the hill. Then Daniels saw it lift from the track and fly along the windswept North Carolina shores. Daniels stood in the sand, breathing hard from the effort, but that steady gaze remained on the birdlike flyer. He noticed it never rose more than 15-20 feet from the ground, but Orville was clearly in control of its direction, levelness and speed.

On that morning, the accomplishment was muted by several more flights of varying success. As Daniels and the guards helped the Wrights wheel their flyer back to the shed, a great wind swept across the beach and upended the flyer with Daniels holding it firmly. In a whirl, the flyer flipped over with Daniels twisted among broken wood, torn canvas, and disassembled motor parts. 

Daniels was badly bruised but able to walk away. The Wright brothers would pack up their broken aircraft and head back to Dayton the next day. Daniels, recovering in bed from the world’s first plane crash, felt the weight of the moment settle in. 

Looking back Daniels would tell the story many times. He would tell it to reporters from all over the world, to barmates at the local tavern, and to the grandchildren that would sit on his lap to hear the tale of the world’s first powered flight.

Daniels would say the same thing each time: We couldn’t help thinking they were just a pair of poor nuts. But they were a long way from being fools. I like to think about it now; I like to think about the way the first airplane sailed in the air at Kill Devils Hill that morning, as pretty as any bird you ever laid eyes on. It wasn’t luck that made them fly; it was hard work and common sense; they put their whole heart and soul, and all their energy, into an idea and they had faith.


Part 1: The Hockey Stick That Changed History
The beginnings of flight stretch back to the Greeks through the Middle Ages and into the early twentieth century. Balloons, gliders, wingsuits--inventions, with varying degrees of success, that lifted man from his earthly bounds to kinda soar through the air. But the flight wasn’t controlled, in fact it was random, unsteady, and often quite deadly.

The story of powered flight and the Wright brothers starts at 7 Hawthorn Street in Dayton, Ohio. According to Wright-brothers.org: Wilbur and Orville Wright grew up in a close, caring family. Their father, Milton Wright – a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren – was a strict disciplinarian, but he and his wife, Susan encouraged intellectual interest and constructive activity. Susan, the daughter of a skilled carriage maker, was remarkably mechanically adept, and she taught her children to make all manner of things. Milton exposed his children to the wide world beyond their horizon through his extensive library and the letters he sent home when he traveled on church business.

The entire family was close, but none closer than Wilbur and Orville, who were four years apart. Later in life Wilbur wrote: "From the time we were little children, my brother Orville and myself lived together, played together, worked together, and, in fact, thought together. We usually owned all of our toys in common, talked over our thoughts and aspirations so that nearly everything that was done in our lives has been the result of conversations, suggestions, and discussions between us."

In 1878, when Wilbur was 11 and Orville 7, their father gave them a helicopter-like toy to share. It was based on an invention by Alphonse Pénaud and was made of paper, bamboo and cork with a rubber band to twirl the motor. The brothers later said this toy was the beginning of an obsession with flying machines.

Wilbur was a brilliant student who showed great promise. In his book, The Wright Brothers, David McCullough writes: There was talk of Yale, but all such plans ended when, playing hockey on a frozen lake beside the Dayton Soldier’s Home, Wilbur was smashed in the face with a stick, knocking out most of his upper front teeth. 
Interestingly, the man who swung the stick that struck Wilbur became one of the most notorious murderers in the history of Ohio. Oliver Crook Haugh, was executed for the murders of his mother, father, brother and twelve others.

According to McCullough: For weeks Wilbur suffered excruciating pain in his face and jaw, then had to be fitted with false teeth. Serious digestive complications followed, then heart palpitations and spells of depression that only seem to lengthen. Wilbur remained a recluse for three years--three years when he began reading as never before. And one of the subjects that captivated his thoughts and raised him from the depths of his despair was the fledgling science of aviation.

Both Wilbur and Orville inherited their mother’s mechanical dexterity and engineering prowess. With Wilbur’s digestion of his father’s library over the last few years, the brothers went into several successful businesses. 

They opened a newspaper business and built a printing press for it. The brothers then opened a bicycle shop and built an engine to run their power tools. Always ones for innovation, they designed their own bicycle with custom features like an oil-retaining wheel hub and coaster brakes, things still used today in modern bikes. 

The brothers spent their precious free time riding their bicycles around the Miami River Valley. Orville even won a few bike races.

In their shared interests and work, the boys forged themselves into an efficient, creative team. Their bicycle shop began to show a steady profit, so the brothers turned their prodigious intellect and curiosity to the field of aviation. And once that happened, history would be forever changed.


Part 2: Fly Like An Eagle, To the Sea
In the book, The Published Writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright, Orville wrote in Century Magazine: In the field of aviation there were two schools, powered flight or soaring flight. Our sympathies were with the latter school, partly, no doubt, from the extraordinary charm and enthusiasm with which the apostles of soaring flight set forth the beauties of sailing through the air on fixed wings, deriving the motive of power from the wind itself.

The boys devoured every book, newspaper clipping and magazine article on flying and glider stories, engineering diagrams and lift calculations. But when the brothers started designing and flying their own versions of published glider blueprints they found several flaws.

In Century Magazine, Wilbur writes: “We say that the calculations upon which all flying-machines had been based were unreliable, and that all were simply groping in the dark. Having set out with absolute faith in the existing scientific data, we were driven to doubt one thing after another, till finally, after two years of experiment, we cast it all aside, and decided to rely entirely upon our own investigations.”

Two bicycle mechanics who never attended college, or even obtained a high school diploma, would reinvent the science of aviation and aerodynamics on their own. As innovative as ever, they built a miniature wind tunnel in a spare room of their bike shop. And field tested their designs on the wind-strewn beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina and the cow-dotted fields in Huffman Prairie, Ohio.

From the beginning the brothers saw beyond “powered gliders” to envision practical aircraft that could carry passengers and achieved flight measured in hours and miles instead of minutes and feet. In this respect, they differed from all of their global competitors who were pursuing powered flight.

In a statement to the Associated Press, Orville wrote: From the beginning the prime object was to devise a machine of practical utility, rather than a useless and extravagant  toy. For this reason extreme lightness of construction has always been resolutely rejected. On the other hand, every effort has been made to increase the scientific efficiency of the wings and screws so that even heavily built machines may be carried with a moderate expenditure of power. 

He goes on to say: The favorable results which have been obtained have been due to improvements in flying quality resulting from more scientific design and improved methods of balancing and steering. The motor and machinery possess no extraordinary qualities. The best dividends on the labor invested have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power.

Their relentless testing, measuring and testing again created features which would change aviation history: wing warping to facilitate turning, an angled propeller to deliver speed, and an elliptical wing, with the fat side forward, to create lift. 

The brothers had an odd chemistry in their work relationship. Wilbur once wrote: After long arguments, we often found ourselves in the ludicrous position of each having been converted to the other’s side, with no more agreement than when the discussion began. 
After their first, short powered flight with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, the brothers spent the next few years improving their design with the Wright Flyer II and Wright Flyer III, which became the world’s first practical airplane.

But there was a problem with their amazing, transformative invention. No one in the U.S., including the Army, was interested in their accomplishments. And, in France, the epicenter of the pursuit of flight and aviation knowledge, no one believed them. In a national Parisian paper, the question was asked of their claims “Are they Flyers or liars?”


Part 3: Rockstar Status
The time to show the world the heights of their brilliance came above a racetrack outside of Le Mans, France in August of 1908. 

Thousands of spectators from Le Mans filled the stands carrying picnic baskets and amicably chatting as they waited to view history. Also present were dozens of reporters from the world press, members of the French Aero Club, and members of the French, Russian and British militaries.

McCullough picks up the story in The Wright Brothers: With dusk settling, Wilbur released the catapult trigger, the weight dropped, and down the rail and into the air he swept. Cheers went up as he sailed away toward a row of tall poplars, where, at what seemed the last minute, the left wing dropped sharply, he banked to the left, turned in a graceful curve, and came flying back to the grandstand. Very near the point where he had started, he made another perfect turn to fly full circle once again, all at about 30 to 35 feet, before coming down to a gentle landing within 50 feet from where he had taken off. In all, he was in the air not quite 2 minutes and covered a distance of 2 miles.

McCullough writes: The crowd was ecstatic, cheering, shouting, hardly able to believe what they had seen. One French pilot who had been waiting all day told a reporter “I would have waited ten times as long to have seen what I have seen today.” “We are children compared to the Wrights,” said another pilot. Le Figaro, a national French newspaper wrote “the enthusiasm was indescribable. It was not merely a success, but a triumph...a decisive victory for aviation, the news of which will revolutionize scientific circles throughout the world.”

Even Wilbur lost his customary composure. McCullough writes: “overwhelmed by the success, he very calmly, his face beaming with a smile, put his hands in his pockets and walked off whistling.” 

While Wilbur was thrilling thousands in the French countryside, Orville was setting international records at military demonstrations at Fort Meyer, Virginia, which was just across the Potomac from Washington D.C. The contract with the army required the plane to reach 40 miles per hour, sustain flight for two hours, and carry a passenger.
Orville, and the brothers' invention, had finally taken the notice of the American press, and the national consciousness. Huge crowds and devoted coverage made the brothers international stars on both sides of the Atlantic. But not every flight ended in success.

McCullough writes about September 17 in The Wright Brothers: The day was clear and cool, wind conditions were ideal. The crowd by the time Orville was ready to take off numbered more than 2,600. Expectations were higher than ever. A young army officer, Lieutenant Selfridge, had been assigned, at his own request, to go with Orville as a passenger.

He goes on: The plane circled the field three times at about 40 miles per hour. On the fourth turn, heading for Arlington Cemetery, Orville slowed down somewhat and all seemed to be working well. Then suddenly a sizable fragment of something was seen to fly off into the air. Then, at an altitude of about 125 feet came two loud thumps and a terrible shaking. Orville shut off the engine, hoping to glide to a landing. He pulled as hard as he could on the steering and lateral balance levers to no effect.

Those below watched in horror as the plane twisted this way and that, then plunged straight down, like a bird shot dead in full flight. It hit the ground with a terrific force, throwing up a swirling cloud of dust. 

Orville and the Lieutenant lay pinned beneath bloodstained wreckage, faces down. Orville was conscious but moaning in pain. Selfridge lay unconscious, a great gash across his forehead, his face covered in blood.

Not until well after dark did word come from the hospital. Orville was in critical condition, with a fractured leg and hip, and four broken ribs, but was expected to live. Lieutenant Selfridge, however, had died at 8:10 pm of a fractured skull without ever regaining consciousness. His was the first fatality in the history of powered flight.





What If? Scenario
In our What If? scenario, the horrific crash that took the life of a promising young lieutenant also takes the life of the father of flight, Orville Wright. His injuries were devastating. His crash was the equivalent of falling from a ten story building.

Word of his death traveled fast, and both Katharine Wright and their father, Milton, hurriedly caught a train to Washington to bring the body home to Dayton. A full military honor guard saw the casket off, and another military tribute was there to greet it on its return home.

Funeral services were delayed until Wilbur could return from France, which he did a week later. A few months earlier, the brothers were treated to one of the largest parades in the state’s history. Now the boisterous celebration, ticker tape parade, rowdy bands and cheering throngs of admirers, were replaced with a solemn and somber funeral procession.

Where the streets were once decorated with American flags and bright banners, now black bunting hung from the buildings along the route to the Dayton cemetery. The Ohio national guard sent an entire regiment to serve as honor guard, and provide a full 21-gun salute.

President Taft came into town to give Orville, an American hero, the proper funeral oration. But with all of the high honors, exaltation of his work, and reverence for the consequences of his brief life, the Wright family was utterly devastated.

Wilbur had lost not just a brother, but a part of himself. Since as far back as his memories go, Orville was a part of his life. 

As McCullough writes in the Wright Brothers: As others in Dayton knew, the two were remarkably self-contained, ever industrious, and virtually inseparable. “Inseparable as twins,” their father would say, and “indispensable to each other.” They lived in the same house, worked together six days a week, ate their meals together, kept their money in a joint bank account, even “thought together”, Wilbur said.

Wilbur leaned on his brothers Reuchlin and Lorin, but it was Katharine who helped piece the family together. In the process, she became an international celebrity as the first woman pilot, a fierce defender of her family’s legacy, and the leader of a global aviation company. 
It is this sister of the famous Wright brothers, and the family’s only college graduate, that secures their fortunes, protects their worldwide patents, and lives to see the age of the jet engine.

It’s Not Just A Man’s Game
Katharine Wright
New York, New York
October 13, 1909

Flying was a unique experience that Katharine Wright never got used to nor took for granted. There were still only a handful of trained pilots in the world, and certainly none of the other pilots were women.

As she flew above the Hudson River, she could hear the horns of the passing ships below. Her mind turned to the start of her piloting career and the letter she wrote to a former Oberlin college roommate.

It had read:
Let us fancy ourselves ready for a start. The machine is placed upon a single rail track facing the wind, and is securely fastened with a cable. The engine is put in motion, and the propellers in the rear whir. You take your seat at the center of the machine, and as operator, I slip the cable, and shoot forward. Before reaching the end of the tract I move the front rudder, and the machine lifts from the rail like a kite supported by the pressure of the air underneath it. The ground under you is at first a perfect blur, but as you rise the objects become clearer. At a height of a hundred feet you feel hardly any motion at all, except for the wind which strikes your face. When I am near the starting point, I stop the motor while still high in the air. The machine coasts down at an oblique angle to the ground, and after sliding fifty or a hundred feet comes to a rest. 

On this night it was warm, but she wore a thick coat. The air could get much cooler a few hundred feet up. The ship horns blared their deep, melancholy bellows and the crew members lined the rails to wave their hats at the passing plane. 

Each bridge she passed under was lined with cheering admirers, who were taking in the site of flight for the first time. In a sign of gratitude, Wright dipped the left wing in their direction and did a slow figure eight turn.

As the wind whipped against her face in a strong gust, her gaze settled on the lights of Manhattan to her left. The oily flames from the gas street lights created a bluish haze that hung over the rows of tenements and buildings that were crammed together in a carpet of disjointed stone. 

The setting sun cast a long yellow light over the island and gave the haze life as it undulated over the buildings like the gentle waves of the Hudson river below.

As Katharine pointed the flyer towards her landing field in New Jersey, she took a deep breath and felt competing feelings of sadness and elation. She was privileged to see this amazingly beautiful site from a perch few would ever hold, but, staring at the empty seat next to her, she couldn’t help thinking of Orville.

He had created this wondrous machine, trained her to be a pilot, and supported her as only a big brother could. Fate had taken him away from her, but when she flew his plane, Katharine couldn’t help but think Orville was in the seat next to her, a copilot for all of her adventures. That brought a smile to her face and a tear to her eye.


What If? Aftermath
At a time when women still couldn’t vote, Katharine Wright took the helm of the Wright Company in 1909. It had to be her. She had worked in the brothers bicycle shop since the early days of their aviation testing. Just by proximity, Katharine knew more about aviation than most aeronautic inventors, with the exception of her omniscient brothers. 

Wilbur had still not recovered from the loss of his brother, and was often overseas. As the face of the company, he was meeting with military and diplomatic leaders in Europe to book orders for their airplane. He was also teaching a new generation of pilots the basics of flight, aircraft maintenance and aerodynamics. Within months, his pupils would set international flight, speed and acrobatic records in the first years of aviation.

Katharine’s daily routine included returning calls from reporters around the world, meeting with lawyers to discuss their patent defense cases, and making sure their manufacturing facilities were on pace to fill orders. It was Katharine who managed the supply chain. Haggling with aluminum suppliers for their engine, textile mills for their canvas wings, and lumber yards for their poplar frames.

Like her brothers, she was a tireless worker, who understood the value of their invention, and sought to maximize the opportunity while they had an exclusive design sought after by militaries from around the world. 

Business boomed over the next few years as they added invention after invention to their aircraft design. And Katharine’s star continued to rise. An accomplished pilot, she wowed throngs of audiences, piloting the Wright Flyer III along the Hudson River at an aviation demonstration in New York. 

It was a particularly comical sight to see her, calm and collected, piloting generals, congressmen, and titans of business in short flights around the countryside. All while they gripped their seats with white knuckles and enjoyed the aerial views with ashen faces.

For Wilbur though, things were taking a turn for the worse. The relentless international travel was taking a toll. Often, he would return to their Hawthorn manor, pale, tired and bone weary.

According to McCullough in The Wright Brothers: He became ill on a business trip to Boston in April 1912. After returning to Dayton in early May, worn down in mind and body, he fell ill again and was diagnosed with typhoid fever. Wilbur died, at age 45, at the Wright family home on May 30, 1912. His father wrote about Wilbur in his diary: "A short life, full of consequences. An unfailing intellect, imperturbable temper, great self-reliance and as great modesty, seeing the right clearly, pursuing it steadfastly, he lived and died."

Without the scions of flight, Katharine knew it was time to cash out of the aviation business. She sold the Wright Company to another aviation company that would eventually become Lockheed Martin. Her founding shares would provide a generous stipend for the rest of her life.

Away from the day-to-day grind of international business, Katharine set up a flying school at the Huffman Prairie airfield, the site of today’s Wright Patterson Airforce Base. Over the next 10 years, she would train hundreds of pilots, who traveled from all over the world to learn from her hard-driving, hands-on style of teaching flight. 

She took the time to get to know each one of them, and invested in their success. In turn, they became the foundation of flight, who would, for the rest of their days, fondly remember their hours on the windswept pasture learning how to soar with the birds. 

One redhead, freckle-faced teenage girl stood out among the multitudes of masculine, young pilots. Not only did this girl show an adeptness at the mechanics of flight, but she shared a passion for flying that bubbled out in every lesson and flight she took. 

Katharine would remember, in later years, how this young girl, Amelia Earhart, could fly circles around the other members of her class, though they were often 10-15 years older than her.

As the decades rolled through World War 1 and World War 2, Katharine saw with horror the power their invention held over cities around the world. When she listened to her brothers excitedly discuss aviation in the cramped rooms of their bicycle shop, she knew they never imagined an era where flying fortresses would rain tons of bombs on hapless citizens cowering in homes. 

The brothers knew the military applications of their plane, but thought it would be used for reconnaissance and plane-to-plane fighting, never carpet bombing of civilian populations.

Katherine knew they would be abjectedly horrified to learn it was the Enola Gay, the great grandchild of their Wright Flyer, that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. 

In her final years, as a member of several aviation boards, she was invited to join a fledgling government agency that was the offshoot of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics or the NACA. This new group, known as NASA, would harness the power of the rocket and send both man and machine into space.

With her sharp eyesight and hawkish gaze, she witnessed the launch of the Mercury rockets and pondered how quickly technology had advanced in 60 years. Unfortunately for history though, she died peacefully in her sleep before she could see a fellow Ohioan, Neil Armstrong, take man’s first steps on the moon.

But the Wrights were not far from Armstrong’s mind. When he landed on the moon in 1969, he carried a small piece of fabric from the original Wright flyer in Lunar Module Eagle on Apollo 11. 

And on Mars, NASA named the first Martian take-off and landing area for the 2021 Ingenuity helicopter "Wright Brothers Field". Like Armstrong on the moon, the helicopter carried a small piece of wing fabric from the 1903 Wright Flyer attached to a cable underneath its solar panel.  

It’s astonishing to think that a small family in Dayton, Ohio, self-taught and self-motivated, conquered the challenge that eluded inventors, scholars, philosophers and kings for millenia. That challenge was how to fly, and two brothers, along with their talented sister, invented aviation. They did it in a bicycle shop in Dayton next door to a mortician. They did it on the swampy, sandy and wind blown shores of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. And they did it in the cow-dotted pasture of Huffman Prairie, Ohio.

Only their drive, their shared mindset and their relentless pursuit for answers and perfection, led them to shed the bonds of gravity and soar where only eagles dare. In the process, they changed history and the course of mankind. 


Conclusion
Thank you for joining me, Mark Bouffard, on this trip. This show is produced by me, Mark Bouffard and Beto McQuade. It is mixed and edited by Beto McQuade. The music you hear is Shane Ivers of silvermansound.com.

Don’t forget to review, like and subscribe to this podcast. Check out our blogs on whatifworldhistory.com and follow us on your favorite social media channel.

This has been What If World History? In two weeks, in our next episode, we will look at the life and death of Alexander Hamilton. And we ponder a history in which Hamilton survives his duel with Aaron Burr. And as a result, he will become one of the most consequential presidents of the young republic and turn it into an international economic powerhouse.