Dueling in early America was far more ritualized than most people realise. The Code Duello demanded an exchange of letters, seconds, and formal challenge before any pistols were drawn — and roughly 9 out of 10 duels were settled before a shot was fired. Hamilton himself had six prior affairs of honor and none reached the trigger.
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At 33:00 · chapter starts 29:40
With Jefferson planning to drop Burr from the 1804 presidential ticket, Burr makes a last-ditch bid for the New York governorship, switching to run as a de-facto Federalist candidate. Hamilton opposes him again, and Burr is routed by the Democratic-Republican Morgan Lewis. Seven weeks after the election, Burr is shown the Albany Register from 24 April 1804, which reports that a Dr. Charles D. Cooper heard Hamilton describe Burr as 'a dangerous man' and hint at holding an even more 'despicable' opinion. Burr fires off a letter demanding Hamilton avow or disavow the word. Hamilton's reply — a long, pedantic, slightly smug meditation on the 'infinite shades' of the word 'despicable' — fails to give Burr the retraction he seeks. Tom thinks it's a great letter; Dominic thinks it's goading. The exchange of letters continues, and when Hamilton refuses a definitive apology, the logic of the Code Duello makes a duel unavoidable.
An estimate suggests that one in five men who served in the Senate from Southern states in the years before the American Civil War had taken part in duels.
Before the fatal duel with Burr, Hamilton had been involved in at least six affairs of honor, none of which had reached the point of actual gunfire — all were settled by compromise.
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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