The Great Kansas Grasshopper Plague of 1874
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- Опубликовано: 16 авг 2020
- After the Civil War, immigrants of all types sought the bounty and promise of the Kansas plains. Then, disaster came from the sky. The creatures were so thick they blocked out the sun, and they ate everything, even the clothes off of people's backs. The History Guy recalls "Stricken Kansas" and the Great Grasshopper Plague of 1874.
This is original content based on research by The History Guy. Images in the Public Domain are carefully selected and provide illustration. As very few images of the actual event are available in the Public Domain, images of similar objects and events are used for illustration.
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All events are portrayed in historical context and for educational purposes. No images or content are primarily intended to shock and disgust. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Non censuram.
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Script by THG
#ushistory #thehistoryguy #Kansas
As around the first fifty viewers noted, Reading Pennsylvania is pronounced "Redding." I meant no disrespect to the Berks County seat. Go Fightin Phils!
Pennsylvania proud!! I apologize if I made a hostile comment!
Don't feel alone there THG. As born West Virginian you be surprised how many people still think WV is part of Virginia. We are only the western side?. That would make 49 states? Still talk part of WV going back to good old VA. Some there VA counties talk come join us. I got land eye site of state line.
Great video, I love your work!. You could take this as an opportunity to look into the great vowel shift, and other reasons why English can be difficult. Just a thought.
ruclips.net/video/VOOAb7erAmE/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/DnHYn_ggAzg/видео.html
"They ate everything but the Mortgage". Brilliant.
Funny seeing that the banks are full of paper ;)
Ahh. jews.
They will own everything.
😂😂
I started farming on my own in 1976. A couple of years later my wife's uncle died. I had worked with him farming his ground and wanted to rent it from his widow for a few years, until I got on my feet. She had other relatives who encouraged her to sell the farm as soon as possible ... which she did. My wife and I bought the farm, paying a huge price for it and acquired a mountain of debt. It was always tough during those early years to make the required land payments and in the 80's interest on my operating note (in excess of 100,000 dollars) climbed to 28%. And then we had the year of the grasshoppers in our area. When I went out to swath my alfalfa the plants were mostly stems covered with yellow grasshoppers. Though my crop was pretty much ruined, at least I had the satisfaction of knowing that most of the grasshoppers that went through the conditioner rolls were squashed dead, but it still turns my stomach recalling seeing them crawling over one another devouring my crops. My Spring crops had to be sprayed with pesticides multiple times, an expense not budgeted for, but necessary in order to survive. And of course, the land payment had to be paid and the bank wanted their money. The bank's loan officer was a heartless, blood-sucking bastard, who was supposed to be a friend. I shot rabbits all through the year so we would have meat to eat and we might have starved if we didn't always have a garden and my wife ground our wheat to make flour for bread. It was a tough year, but we survived by the skin of our teeth. My wife also sewed most of our clothes and kept us going by patching them as needed. Now we have everything paid for and enough money in the bank to live comfortably the rest of our lives.
What a roller coaster of a tale. Glad to hear you and your family made it through!
That was a bad time (understatement) in the farm world. Personally I lay the blame squarely on the Grinning Idiot whose stupidity reeked havoc on the economy which was coupled with foreign policy. Bankers also piled on and doubled down the whole mess Jimmy started.
I wanted to farm but my dad was against it, saying there are much better ways to earn a living. From a financial security viewpoint he was right and for a long time I was glad not to be in the ag business. I bailed out at the end of 1978. Land prices were already crack smoking crazy, driven by the inflationary moves by Peanut Head.
Many of the farm auctions in the early 80's were folks who paid the nutty land prices in the late 70's. Frankly I didn't and don't feel sorry for them.
The ironic thing is Ol Jimmah said there is no reason inflation can't be kept lower than 4%. That was in August 1976 and I was in the crowd. Four years later inflation was 13%, home loans were 20% to 22% which sounds like science fiction today. A co-worker was ecstatic he got a home loan for 18%!!!! By 1980 I was very sorry I supported "him".
People who didn't live through those times have no clue what it was like. By comparison we live in a Golden Age right now.
I read your text with Dick Proenneke's voice in my head!
ruclips.net/video/Ggh1Dq0sMHw/видео.html
The benefits of perseverance and hard work. Well done my friend. You've definitely earned your right to "live comfortably."
Thankyou for sharing your history.
They chose not to blame and find fault, they chose to help. There is a lesson there.
Yes yes there is
Very true
That's how our liberal entitled youth are today, they blame others and don't help others nor even themselves...
@@modestoca25 Wouldnt that be the blame thing we should be working against?
Not to be negative Nancy and all, but I highly doubt that beyond the printed word and at any gathering spot, churches, watering hole, that would not be the case. Im sure God was mentioned and sin, and most likely, "it started b/c such and such (national family type, Swiss, German, Jew, Southern/Northerner ect) had some odd way of farming". Humans afterall, will be humans.
I guess about 15 years ago we had a significant grasshopper "bloom" here north of Dallas. They stripped our peach orchard, ate all the leaves and left nothing but the pits hanging on the trees. I had stocked our lake with channel catfish fingerlings that spring. They were up to 10 pounds by fall.
The silver lining to the cloud of locust, lunker catfish.
Operating on the idea that "you are what you eat", and knowing that corn-fed cattle taste different from grass-fed, and free-range pigs foraging on acorns have more flavor then factory-farmed porkers, did those catfish taste like grasshoppers? I mean this in all seriousness being a fisherman ( mostly saltwater) myself.....for instance, I once cooked and ate a largemouth bass that I caught in a muddy swampy pond and that's what it tasted like, mud and swamp.
@@goodun2974
They were as good catfish as I ever ate. Channel cats are the garbage disposers of the lake. Blues and yellow cats are more discriminating. Bullheads can get muddy tasting in late summer here but all our other fish always taste right.
Crazy
Back in the 70's my grandfather would take me out to catch them for trotline bait . They were 3" or 4" long .
“Americans helping Americans...” that’s so right, those immigrants were Americans, America is more than a country, it’s a dream, a state of mind.
Truer words... Where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day. Its a state of mind that is lost on so many Americans these days.
I watched a program yesterday ,where blm or antifa meet Patriots got in a scuffle,after the blm/antifa guy settled down the Patriots gave him water and checked his wounds,then gave him a HUG!!!---WWG1WGA
My family were never immigrants. We were settlers. The rest of you are "squatters."
Please note..the immigrants were LEGAL immigrants.
The politics of dancing
The politics of,ooh, feeling good
The politics of moving, aha
If this message's understood
I remember reading about this in Laura Ingalls-Wilder's book on the Banks of Plum Creek, the detail of the grasshopper swarms had been terrifying to me as a child and even as an adult.
_On the Banks of Plum Creek_ was what first came to mind when I saw the thumbnail for this video; I've loved Laura Ingalls Wilder's books for almost 50 years. Another of THG's videos is about the blizzards depicted in _The Long Winter._
THG: "To understand the grasshopper plague, you have to first understand grasshoppers."
Me: Freshening my drink, settling in, and getting ready to delve deep into the intricacies of the grasshopper mind.
This reminds me of the passenger pigeon. Nobody thought those could possibly go extinct either given how many there were, but they're also gone.
ruclips.net/video/b8BPANZzsyU/видео.html
Was going to say history guy did a great video on that already.
Yup, the tree blight wiped out their nesting sites and that was that.
I was thinking the same thing.
Unlike with the passenger pigeons, the Rocky Mountain Locust extinction was good riddance to bad rubbish.
My Great-Greats Homesteaded a section in SW Kansas. They made it through the plagues of locusts, fires, some kind of crop disease, but then GrandPa lost it during the dust bowl/depression. He used to tell some great stories.
It's sad that he made it through so much and then lost it there. But it must have been wonderful to hear his stories. Did you have a particular favorite?
Nik Burton
My history too. Homesteaded near Manchester, a rail stop. Swiss and Scottish and German people. I can still go to the quarter section today, but it is not in the family. They were wiped out by grasshoppers at one point, but survived and built a great and honorable life and legacy to pass on to their decedents. Was privileged to know my great grandfather and hear his stories. He was the grandson of the homesteader in one branch of the family.
You should have them written down. That would be fascinating.
My parents were from SW Kansas (Hamilton County) and they knew about the Dust Bowl. My mother told a story of teaching in a one-room schoolhouse; on Friday afternoons she would close and lock the windows, but every Monday there would be at least a quarter-inch of silt inside on the windowsills.
@@richardtibbitts3841 my folks were from Wilburton, named for William Burton. I think the population topped at about 287, including drunks and alley cats. It's listed as a ghost town now. It's in Merton County. I may make a road trip this summer in my new truck.
The last great grasshopper swarm happened in the 1930s. My grandfather lost a leather coat. My great grandfather saved his barley field by whipping around handfuls of sand. He had a hot temper and it came in handy when he spent all night throwing a wagon-load of sand at bugs.
Your ability to verbally depict a time or event in history with such vibrant color and mental clarity makes you the Bob Ross of descriptive history sir. Thank you for yet another moment we all should remember.
And that my dear friend.....is not..... A HAPPY ACCIDENT!!!!!!!
"America has survived worse, as long as we pull together." - THG >
Good (and true) words of hope that are needed in times like these.
I love your bow tie! >
WW1; The Great Depression; WW2; the upheavals of the 60s; the oil crisis of the 70s; recessions; the Challenger and Columbia; Columbine and 9/11: we got through it all. We work best when we work together and our enemies know this, which is why they try to drive us apart.
ruclips.net/video/UotKNnUsQwE/видео.html
We are done if we dont. And we better start fast.
I don't feel like learning mandarin by force
I've lived in Kansas since 1962, when I started 1st grade. I've never heard any of this. It was never taught in school. Thank you for enlightening me. This was quite interesting.
My mom's dad (my Grandad) would tell me stories about it. Since you say you came here in '62, I can't believe no one ever talked about it. I live in the opposite corner of the state and people up here STILL talk about plagues that happened later. To think that the one of 1874 was worse warps the mind. Unimaginable.
@@seanharris2320 Wichita school district.
I guess propaganda took precedence over local history
When my father was a young boy growing up on the plains of Kansas, they still had periodic swarms of grasshoppers, although not as bad as the one depicted in this episode. A jar of dead grasshoppers was accepted as payment at the movie theater. To the day he died my uncle would not go to a movie theater because the memory of the smell of all those dead grasshoppers would make him sick.
Wow! The smell of grasshoppers while watching a movie. Cool, as long as they don't eat the popcorn!
The University of Nebraska's nickname was "The Bugeaters' prior to the 1900's.
Jeff Hinrichs I think they should have stuck with it!
@@TheHistoryGuyChannel LOL!! I'm glad the Hawkeyes didn't change their name! :)
The cafeteria at UC Boulder is named the Alfred Packer Restaurant and Grill, after a famous local cannibal. During sentencing, the judge is alleged to have said, "There were 6 democrats in this county, and you ate five of them last winter".
@@blondbowler8776 Wait doesn't that mean he takes on their characteristics?
I grew up on a farm a little west of the small Kansas town of Inman. My grandfather and a few teachers along the way told of the plague of locusts that had happened in the past. Thanks History Guy for remembering.
History Guy - These are fantastic. I grew up under USSR, and some of my children and grandchildren live in Central Asia now. The damage done by Marxist agenda is not understood by the professors at our USA colleges and universities and by the youth that are fed this damaging doctrine. Would you help our country by featuring "History that deserves to be remembered" regarding Soviet, Chinese, Cuban, Venezuelan, and all the failures of this dangerous doctrine that threatens our freedom? Thank you!
“Ate the wool off of a live sheep”
Thank you for another great episode! In her book, Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder describes how her family experienced this plague of locusts. Born in 1867, she would have been about 7 years old at the time, and later could describe in great detail the devastation and the despair. It's truly an event that needs to be remembered.
I bet there were tons of people claiming the " THE END IS AT HAND"
People are doing that now...
robert hill And have and will always be doing that...
@@losttribe3001 yupp.
It was for some, probably.
They keep saying that, someday they're gonna be right!
I remember a swarm of locust that came through in Oklahoma when I was a kid back in the late 70's. It was terrifying with them flying everywhere and that loud buzz. But, they didn't land, they just kept on going.
People around here still help each other like that. Tornados haven't stopped, and theives still break in houses of poor families and steal their Christmas presents. It's just what we've had do do to survive. Although, I have seen a drop off the older I get, or a wariness toward strangers, we still help our neighbor for the most part. You have to. It doesn't seem that way everywhere in the rest of the world. We are a unique people.
People tend to be most generous in places where hardship visits often. In the driest state on the driest (inhabited) continent there is still the sort of spirit you describe. I'd deny that either your (or my) people are anything like unique but I would say that hardship is not evil. ...not pleasant, but not evil.
Evil can only be attributed to that which has free will, ie: us. Should God choose to refine gold, it will go into the crucible. People tend to be at their most rapacious when they have plenty for all yet find that plenty to be too small for their importance. People tend to be at their best and most empathetic when they have wahrer kampf.
.
The inner cities are hard to love your neighbor when you don't even know each other, and the atmosphere isn't exactly a family/community oriented vibe.
@@AnonMedic Yeah, I'd agree with that. I was born in Kings Cross, Sydney... dropped into Port Pirie, South Australia (Pop 15000) in 1985 for a weeks visit. Been all over the world since, keep coming back. I'll take living in a community over living in an economy any day of the week.
Edit:typo
I remember I was a kid. I shot them on the porch with my bb gun. The big ones had such a tough shell that it took as many as three shots to kill them.
Lol Japan as a whole country have you beat. They have the ultra bee hive though and due to that culture they have the lowest crime rate and homeless rate in the world.
The amount of detail given to the locust is remarkable. I am always impressed and appreciative of these videos, but this was truly on a different level.
Those people learnt how dogged determination conquered that plague. Your analogy with today's situation is well taken.
I really hope those seeds planted in the opening roll weren't "randomly sent to you from China..."
LOL
@@TheHistoryGuyChannel Have you done the Great Crush Collision? Scott Joplin wrote a rag about it...
We worry (quite rightly) about mystery seeds from China, but *tumbleweeds* are from Russia. And they're like... the grasshoppers of the plant world.
As the 60's Rock Stations always said: "And the Hits just keep on coming! " Kudos History Guy for ambushing me and totally hijacking 17 minutes of my day! But you make it so much fun I can't help myself!
This was very interesting and sad for the people who went through it in Kansas. Many of the people in Kansas starved because of the total destruction of their crops. The mention of the Bolivar Bulletin in this piece was the newspaper that my parents, Alan and Estelle Sexton, owned and operated from 1940 until 1974.
Ironic - the thing that created the conditions for the dust storms of the 30's (the disc plow) was probably also responsible for the eradication of that species of grasshopper.
They laid their eggs shallow on the plains and the disc would just - wipe them out.
Read the book
The Worst Hard Time.
Very informative.
Thank you for reminding us why it's valuable to work together in a crisis.
Thank you. I was born and raised in Kansas in '41 and have many memories of catching grasshoppers that were plentiful in my youth, some to use as bait for catching crayfish which were also plentiful in the ditches on the sides of the land. The account of who settled the land was a great addition to the story of the earlier plagues the settlers endured. I can also attest that if you give them the opportunity, they can bite painfully and leave their "tobacco stain".
I grew up catching them with my grandpa in Oklahoma. We caught them by the hundreds along with crickets which sometimes get such numbers the ground undulates with brown waves across the yard (horse apples are the only repellent we found to keep them out of the house- we put them in bowls or baskets in every room and still hear them in the bedroom at night). We would catch both hoppers and crickets, put them in zip lock plastic bags and throw them in one of the freezers for use later. Both of these revive when thawed and make excellent bait for catfish, bass, crappie and perch. After retirement, my grandparents depended on the fish and squirrels and rabbits my grandad shot to survive in the 70s and 80s. Social Security was not enough and Medicare hardly put a dent in expensive medications and doctor’s bills back then. Grandpa also sold anything that could be recycled like pop cans and bottles and especially copper wire he would find by the roadsides. It is shameful how the aged are treated. I get by much better now that I am retired due to disability but it’s still hard sometimes.
Thus, "Love thy neighbor as thy self" is given greater understanding when we all pull together to overcome adversity.
But they didn't overcome adversity, it simply passed over them. Saying they overcame this is like saying the people overcame the Dust Bowl by sweeping the dust out of their houses.
@@AllenSymonds *FAIL.*
The fact that they went extinct shocked me. Immsure, nowadays, that there would be organizations to aid and protect the locusts.
After what they did to Peter Graves in that poster?
Excellent point.. though I found myself what species a bit further up the food chain must have bit the dust too, when the last of the locusts died....
Locust lives matter!
@@orbyfan So says a stalk of corn. LOL
If there is ever a law protecting locusts, everyone should disobey it. That would be like prohibiting the killing of a mosquito that was biting you.
Thank you again, History couple.
You teach me every day. And for a guy with wide range memory loss, that’s important.
You’re astonishing
Don’t forget the History cat 🐈 as well!
Good message for the present times. Thank you for telling the story. I should hope and pray such good will returns among us.
I do not have the money for an ad free account.
I put the video on watch later list. Then I watch the video skipping the ads.
Later in the evening before bed I set up my computer on my watch later list and hit play.
I let all the ads roll on all my subscribed channels.
So the content creators get a check.
It is just an idea.
I'm always amazed by these tails of great plagues of grasshoppers/locusts and your video on the passenger pigeon. We are truly in the middle of a great extinction.
I was in Dallas for a week in the 1980"s
There was a plague of "Morman Crickets" They did not eat anything or cause much destruction but they were literally inches deep all around the City. They were shiny black, fascinating but could not be removed as there were so many
Getting pretty fancy with the intro old man.
(Had to go back twice to see it)
Looking good friend, looking good.
"Dorothy Gale" isn't in Kansas anymore, she's in the History Guy's study.
Just a year after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, Mormon pioneers were faced with an infestation of "crickets" (actually a species of katydid). The insects were unstoppable and began consuming the crops the pioneers depended on for survival. The California Seagull became the state bird of Utah by descending on the crickets and reportedly gorged on them, flew to a water source, drank water, regurgitated the insects, and then flew back and ate more. This went on for about two weeks. The event is regarded as a miracle by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
We still have them but mostly out in the sparsely populated areas of Utah and Nevada. Depends on the weather if they swarm. Unlike grasshoppers, Mormon crickets flightless and are cannibalistic. Because of this, they can be killed by spreading poisonous bait on the ground. The first crickets eat the bait and die and then subsequent waves of crickets will eat the dead crickets and also die. So unless you live out in the middle of nowhere, you probably will never see a Mormon cricket.
I think I saw a story about this on Death Valley Days. An entertaining TV show.
Mormon Crickets are so ghastly looking. We ran into an infestation of them near the junction of the I-15 and I-70 years ago. They're huge and you can hear a big crunch when you run over them in your car! So gross!
@@aimeepotts2137 I can honestly say I don't think I've ever seen one.
@@aimeepotts2137 We had an infestation this year in that area of the state and agriculture officials expect that next year the infestation will spread to other counties.
I first learned about this plague from Laura Ingalls Wilder. I'm so glad to hear the rest of the story.
I request a video on DDT, and the book by Rachel Carson, "Silent Spring". This video reminded me of learning a little bit of that. I wrote a term paper in my freshman year of high school that really made me think a lot, and to this day as a 54 year old, about the chemicals used in our ground, in our food. I'm not someone who is extreme, just a person who thinks we might need to pay a little more attention to these things, considering what I learned as a young girl.
Recommended reading _ "Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that Shaped the American Frontier" by Jeffrey A. Lockwood
SciShow addressed the subject in their RUclips segment of August 31, 2020.
Interesting story, I'd never heard of this before.
The photo of Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale is a nice touch.
Yes, but why is Baby Yoda there?
Wow. Most of the History Guy's work is good. This one was brilliant. Thank you.
In the 1970's we had a cricket invasion. Literally inches of them on the roads.
In the 90s we had a ladybug invasion. It was too much cuteness.
@@chesthoIe , In some States people find invasive Marmorated Stinkbugs taking up residence into their homes in the fall as it starts to get colder. Thousands of them, perhaps tens of thousands of them. Nothing cute about them at all, and being non native they don't have any natural predators.
@Babba Ganoush yikes
@@chesthoIe In the 2000's we had a ladybug explosion in Iowa & Minnesota. But these were Japanese ladybugs not the nice ladybugs we know. These nasty things were bigger, put off a bad odor and had a sharp bite. These things were deliberately imported by farmers to eat a certain insect that was attacking the soybean crop.
So to solve one problem an equally bad problem was introduced.
They showed up at residential homes when the soybeans were harvested by the thousands to find a safe warm place to winter. Bringing in these rotten ladybugs was an idea not thought through.
But Hey!, anything to squeeze out 1 more bushel of soybeans from the already over-burdened, over-chemicaled soil. :(
@@LuvBorderCollies: I remember those damn things (lower Wisconsin) but I haven't seen one of them in probably 20 years. I can still feel their bite....they'd just land on and bite you for the fun of it ! What happened to them ?
Super interesting. I live on the high plains of Southeastern Colorado. There is a book called “the worst hard time“ that talks about the dust bowl in this area. One of the best books I’ve ever read. But it talks about grasshopper swarms like that right in the middle of all of the blowing dirt. Kind of like getting kicked when you’re down. But I remember my dad saying that those types of grasshoppers being extinct now. We farm here, and there are still grasshoppers but not like that.
Excellent book.
@@shawnr771 Yes it is. There was a video here on YT that featured Tim Egan about the Dust Bowl (the grasshoppers were a part of it) but I think those selfish bitches at PBS (PUBLIC Broadcasting) took it down.
@@indy_go_blue6048 ruclips.net/video/uLiadTzab3U/видео.html
I absolutely loved this one! Especially your commentary about pulling together! United we stand! Thank you for being you and sharing your passion for history.
There was a smaller grasshopper plague in Oklahoma in the early 50's, crickets at the same time. Visiting my pioneer great-grandmother in Tulsa, a fearless neighbor lady went outside to hang laundry. She was covered in 2-3 inch grasshoppers in 6 minutes flat.
Anyway, like I was sayin', locust is the fruit of the prairie.
You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey's uh, locust-kabobs, locust creole, locust gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple locust, lemon locust, coconut locust, pepper locust, locust soup, locust stew, locust salad, locust and potatoes, locust burger, locust sandwich.
That- that's about it.
Well done.
"Well, that's all l got to say."
A historic movie in its own way.
Now I know all there is to know about locustin'.
Captain Woodrow F. Call didn't like fried grasshopper.
Bubba? Is that you? I thought you was dead!
Those intros keep getting more and more intricate and I'm totally here for it. Great video!
Thank you for the very interesting article ! We have a lot of grasshoppers around today here in Kansas ! Take care , stay safe and healthy wherever your next adventure takes you ! Doing well here in Kansas .
I drove through a grasshopper plague about 20 years ago going from Kansas to Colorado. We were about 20 min east from the Colorado line. We saw what looked like a flock of birds in the distance, about a mile or 2 ahead of us.
When we drove into the swarm it was almost like driving into a hail storm, the noise was intense. In very little time the windshield was completely covered in bug guts and the windshield wipers couldn't wipe it off because if the stuff stuck to them. The radiator got completely clogged and our van started to overheat. Out in the middle of no where. The swarm only lasted for about a mile or so, so it wasn't nearly the same as the ones in the video but my small encounter really brings it into perspective.
Reading, pa pronounced "red-ing". You're the man, THG! Keep it up; you're my daughter's history professor this markng period :) Greetings from Philly
A telling point about the need for society to pull together in hard times
False narrative.
We learned about the locusts, growing up in Colorado.. I was both sad for those people, and angry at the bugs (small kids don't generally understand the concept of pure instinct) and so, my father offered me a chance to avenge them, as he put it.. Chocolate covered grasshoppers..
Revenge is sweet, in that case, and crunchy..?
They're also very good fried in chili garlic sauce.. much like shrimps.
Always a terrific presentation by THG. It was very interesting to hear how the Rocky Mountain Grasshopper, was eradicated by Westward land development, agricultural boom, and chance.
I will note though, that there have been subsequent locust plagues, that occurred in the 1950's, 70's, and 80's. They may not have been as noteworthy, but I've heard family stories, and experienced for myself, locust plagues in my lifetime, since the 1950's. And yes, they will eat anything organic, including the clothes off your back if they're not synthetic; and they do bite. Consequently, I hate grasshoppers, and freak out if I see even one in my path. I'd rather have a rattlesnake in my path, and have a number of times, without much more than a healthy avoidance.
Sadly, China and Africa, recently suffered locust plagues that destroyed crops. It's still a very real threat to food supplies, worldwide.
Preserved specimens are indeed rare...I bought a Victorian Insect collections years ago and in it was a Rocky Mountain Locust , it sold VERY good more then any thing else in the collection
I thing some are still found in the high mountain passes in the Rocky Mountains preserved in the snow.
There was some thinking that they never became extinct but only lost the locust swarm phase, but I think DNA has proved they did go extinct
I live in Montana and we’ve always had lots of grasshoppers in the summers. This year it’s seems like there’s a normal number but what IS prolific here right now is earwigs! Thousands upon thousands of them. Everywhere. I’m pretty safe from them in my apartment, but they are all over my daughters home and other peoples homes. Disgusting things. She was drinking a beverage from her stainless cup and sucked one into her mouth. It had crawled into her straw.
I hate earwigs.
Oh that's horrifying!
That is the most horrific thing I’ve ever read. I can handle snakes, spiders, bees, whatever, but earwigs are my nemesis. Just seeing one makes me run, eww, ick, gross. Having one in my mouth...???!!!
Couple of summers ago I was riding my bike when a wasp flew into my mouth. Stung me 3 times before I got it spit out. I rode another 10 miles and finished my ride. No big deal. LOL Some earwigs around here, I don't find them a big deal. Snakes I pick up and examine as long as they're not venomous. But a wittle spider comes crawling across my desk and I'm standing on a chair squealing like a little school girl. LOL
Completely safe to eat crunchy protein. Low Fat also !!!
I was out west one summer in New Mexico. We stopped along a road to take a break. Being from St. Louis, I had seen grass hoppers before. Green, an inch or so long. What we saw along the road that day truly amazed. They were brown, numerous, and surprisingly huge! I could see how they could easily cause destruction. Amazing creatures, but I’ll stay close to home.
Being born and raised in Kansas I love this story. They use to teach this in school here when I grew up. Kansas has survived a lot of weird things over her life time. The dirty thirties for example and our fair share of tornadoes. But the people of Kansas never give up. Thank you history guy. Be blessed brother...
Can you do the story about the kidnapping of Daniel Boone’s daughter and the Calloway girls?
Wow! Yes, did they get raped?
@@AllenSymonds No, they were rescued by Boone and their future husbands.
@@unknowntexan4570 Oh good! I was afraid that it was something like Boudica where they were violated and then sought revenge. Daniel Boone never accepted the new calendar which was changed in September 1752 from the Julian to the Gregorian.
I wonder if the rise of the Locust may have been a direct result of the decline and eventual extinction of the Passenger Pigeon.
IIRC those pigeons thrived east of the Mississippi.
Absolutely facinating! They just disappeared? Amazing. I just love this channel.
16:00 Truer words haven't been uttered in quite sometime! Thanks Hi Guy!
I've lived in Kansas for most of my life and never heard about this. Fascinating.
Interesting intros lately, lol.
Yeah they are... not the best
I remember when I discovered Adobe After Effects
I am using Viddyoze. They are just a bit of fun.
@@TheHistoryGuyChannel I for one like your creativity. Keep it up, it is enjoyed. You do you.
I like them. They’re fun and interesting. Keep up the good work.
Native Kansan here, thanks for this. From what I have heard, if you see pictures of the Dust Bowl, just think of the dust clouds as the grasshoppers and that's what it was like.
I love your channel so very much! Thank you so much for everything you do!
Wow that intro went wild tho lol... last night I watched over 20 history guy videos, the only unfortunate part is that I probably will only remember 7% of what I learned because of so much I watched
you only need a little bit
You may watch them more than once. I do, and can remember almost 8%.
You both have me beat. I not only don't remember what I learned, when I see a video listed I can't remember if I even watched it at all, or just saw the thumbnail.
Kansas again.
"Auntie Em!
Auntie Em!
There's no place like home!
There's no place like home!"
Dear Mr Guy,
Im a History dude. I'm not braggadocious, but there arent many men in vermilion parish who can stump me with respect to the deeds of the past, or that which has been recorded for posterity. But.. youre the %$#@ing MAN. My favorite channel, by far. Lindybeigh is good too, but you and the lovely Mrs Guy will be the only folks i support on patreon.
With Respect, Affection, and Gratitude,
JoshuaPaul
as usual sir good vid love the delivery of the lines and the tie never change
Because of the extinction of the Rocky Mountain locust, North America (and Antarctica) is the only place on earth that has no major locust species.
Also note, there is a species called the Mormon cricket that still wrecks havoc on agriculture in North America. They dont fly in swarms as locusts do but they come in mass swarms on the ground which makes some erected barriers effective in diverting their direction.
The key there is the word major. Here in the mid-Atlantic we had our 17-year locusts this year. They are not damaging to plants, but they can make a truly eerie racket. I have heard similar sound used in movies to great effect.
@@kmlammto , Those are not locusts, they are cicadas. Completely different insect. Noisy, but pretty much harmless.
@@goodun2974 We always called them locusts. Now every time they show up some spoilsport has to point out that they're really cicadas. Bob Dylan called them locusts in his song about receiving his honorary degree at Princeton while they were in full cry. Are you calling the Nobel Prize winning Voice of a Generation a liar?
@@jamesclendon4811 , Dylan rarely gave a straight answer to anything and frequently resorted to "artistic license" in both music and interviews, so in a sense you *could* say he was a liar! Picasso also spoke of this: "art is the lie that makes us see truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand". Another good example of an excellent musician (certainly a much better guitar player and singer then Dylan anyway) using artistic license would be Richard Thompson's song "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" where a dying bank-robber/biker gives his motorcycle to his red-headed girlfriend: " well he reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys / he said ' I've got no further use for these'....". Except that the Vincent was a kick-start motorcycle, and didn't have key start!.
@@goodun2974 Oh dear! That's much too serious a response to a tongue-in-cheek comment! That Dylan song has special meaning for me because I worked in Princeton and was in the town that day and facetiously flatter myself that my presence is suggested by the line "Outside the gates the trucks were unloading." And, as he sings, "the locusts sang." They really did, and we really did call them locusts locally, and I fully accept that they were really cicadas. And I doubt the Nobel committee were thinking of that song when they were considering him for the prize.
Is this the one that was mentioned in Laura Ingalls Wilder's books? (On the banks of Plum Creek, I believe)
Yes. In "On The Banks of Plum Creek" She described the plague as it struck her family's farm in Minnesota.
And I thought Ingalls-Wilder exaggerated for dramatic effect.
LightningwingDragon yes it is the one. Read the books many times
The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
Interesting. I also remember a swarm of grasshoppers stopping a train on “The Rifleman”. With that said a video on Chuck Conners would be interesting. He played professional basketball and baseball along with being an actor. He also met with Soviet leader Brezhnev as his show “The Rifleman” was one of his favorites. Just a thought!!🙂
This plauge was also featured in Rolvaag's "Giants in the Earth", a novel about Norwegian immigrants in Dakota territory.
SUPER INTERESTING WATCH ........ABSOLUTLY LOVED IT
One of your best episodes, Lance!
Reading, PA is pronounced "Red-ing". My Paternal Grandparents lived there and I have visited the city many times since the '60s. Tourists always shop at the factory outlets and drive up Mt. Penn to The Pagoda or catch a Reading Phillies Minor League Baseball Game. Charles Duryea tested some of his earliest experimental automobiles on down hill runs on Mt. Penn.
Reading Pennsylvania is pronounced "red-ing"
Haha. Just noticed the pinned comment.
why is it?
Another great doco HG. Thankyou.
Love your videos THG! I have learned so much. History is so fascinating.
I would’ve been eating fried locust
I’m kind of surprised eating insects didn’t come out of this in the west
I live in Kansas. First job was as a carry-out for a grocery store. We had cans of fried grasshopper on the shelves then, don't know if any are still sold these days.
@@whalesong999, I ate fried grasshoppers from a can in the Sixties, when I was maybe 10 or so. We all liked 'em.
good 'un - they are great!
One if my earliest vague memories is sitting with my Grandpa on the edge of the box of a grain truck loaded with wheat. He pulled the legs off of a grasshopper and ate it or pretended to. To this day I don't know if he was pulling my leg or not. I wish I could ask my Dad. This was in NE North Dakota in the late 50's
Tim Gelder - I learned about eating grasshoppers in SERE school. It’s a military survival school, sort of. They kind of beat you a little there. But a great school nun the less. You don’t have to worry about them being poisonous in any country so a great source of protein and a good amount. Ants are great but it requires to many so you loose in a work trade off.
It’s pronounced like “redding”.
You mean, just like the city in England? Who'da thunk it... ;-D
You always do such a great job on your research and visuals!!!
I had ancestors in this plague. After serving in the Union Army, Elias W. Ives settled in a homestead in Antelope County, Nebraska. The locusts ate everything including the paint off of machinery.
1874- the year grasshoppers almost took over middle America.😁
Back then they were called grasshoppers. Nowadays they're called Californians. 😋
theuglybiker Nah, ‘ems just Okies moving back where they started. 😅
Thank you for your history lessons and positive outlook!
Great message for the times. Thank you for producing these. And my, you seem to be having a lot of fun with the animated openings! :D
Thank you for these great and extremely interesting videos!!!!
Fascinating and very well researched.
Thank you so much.
Insightful as always, and much deeper than the subject. Also, beautiful tie!
Great video as always! Keep up the great work!
Long time lurker; I just wanted to say I love your channel. Thanks for making great history videos.
Another great video as usual. Keep doing what you’re doing love the content.
What an uplifting story for this time of despair. God bless America.
A little over 20 years ago I got to witness pieces of swarms of Mormon crickets. In some areas you couldn't walk without stepping on them. In places they were so thick they made the roads slick. What I saw was just a sample size of what you describe, but enough to know it could be truly devastating.
Thanks for the timely show.
"Somewhere" in frame. 😊
Someday maybe, February 20, 1971.
Thank you! Doing a research paper on this for my Disasters in American History class. I am citing Riley’s report.
Always engaging. Very entertaining. Thank you.
No better time than now to pull together! Thank You History Guy and my best to Mrs. History Gal! DaveyJO in Pa.