Hamilton was probably born in 1755 on the sugar island of Nevis — an illegitimate child abandoned by his father and orphaned in his early teens. The people of Nevis recognised his talent and sent him to New York, where he joined the revolution and caught George Washington's eye.
Where this was said
At 9:20 · chapter starts 6:40
Dominic Sandbrook notes that Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical — which opened off-Broadway in 2015 — was an unlikely triumph given that Hamilton is not the most celebrated Founding Father. He then delivers what he calls 'a tiny note of criticism': Miranda missed the comedy of Hamilton's semi-Scottish, semi-Caribbean accent, the authentic voice of early Americans. The hosts then tackle the central interpretive question of the episode: is Burr the villain of history, or has he been unfairly smeared? Dominic introduces Gore Vidal's novel 'Burr,' in which Hamilton is the duplicitous opportunist, and Nancy Isenberg's recent scholarly rehabilitation of Burr. Tom, firmly team Hamilton, counters that Hamilton's insult of 'Cataline' — the scheming late-Republican conspirator — is essentially accurate.
Factories that replaced coal engines with electric ones in the early 1900s got only 6% efficiency gains. Those that redesigned their entire factory around electricity got a 3x productivity improvement. Swapping AI tools into your existing structure will give you 6%. Rebuilding around AI will give you 10x.
Lebanese terrorists backed by Iran were holding American hostages throughout the Reagan presidency. Reagan had loudly campaigned against negotiating with terrorists — putting him in an impossible position that his team quietly decided to ignore.
During the Iran-Iraq War, the US openly supplied Iraq with weapons, training, and intelligence. At the same time, Oliver North was secretly funneling missiles to Iran. The US was playing both sides of a shooting war.
Oliver North traveled to Iran under the alias 'William P. Goode' with a fake passport. CIA Director William Casey allegedly gave him cyanide pills so he could kill himself rather than be tortured if captured. He returned safely and the deal moved forward.
The Pentagon sold missiles to the CIA for $3,700 each. The CIA sold them to Richard Secord at cost. Secord sold them to Iranian middleman Ghorbanifar for $10,000 each. Ghorbanifar charged Iran even more. The profit — including $3 million in interest in one Swiss account — was diverted directly to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.
America secretly transferred 2,000 missiles and missile parts to Iran in 8 shipments over more than a year. Only 3 of 7 hostages were released. Three more were taken. The net result was zero freed hostages and a full-blown constitutional scandal.
On October 5, 1986, a CIA Contra supply plane flew a weapons drop at 2,500 feet in broad daylight. A Sandinista soldier shot it down. The only survivor, Eugene Hasenfuss, had borrowed a parachute from his skydiving brother. He was captured, paraded in front of cameras, and told the Sandinistas everything he knew.
The CIA supply operation used a front company called Southern Air Transport, widely known to be a CIA cover. Crew members of the downed plane carried their Southern Air Transport employee IDs in their wallets. One also had a business card directly linking him to Oliver North's office in Washington.
When the scandal broke, Oliver North and his secretary Fawn Hall conducted what became known as a 'shredding party,' destroying a day's worth of documents. The full truth of Iran-Contra may never be known because of what was fed through that shredder.
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