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Sponsored by GSK. All right, with me right now is Eric Sean of Fox News Fame, senior correspondent, and he's also hosting Crazy American History as we get to set to celebrate July 4th and the 250th birthday of America. Then the hard stuff started after we declared. Eric, welcome. Hey, Brian, great to see you.
Thanks for having me. What made you do Crazy American History?
Well, we're celebrating the 250th birthday, of course, and I thought there are probably stories out there that they did not tell us in high school.
So we started looking at some of these and we found some doozies. For example. Uh example. Uh who designed the flag? The American flag.
So, what did you find out?
Well, everyone says, like, Betsy Ross. No, I mean the current flag now. There is a story that's been out there for decades that the current 50-star American flag was designed by a 17-year-old high school student from Lancaster, Ohio. His name was Bob Hefton. 1958, he designs a 50-star flag for his history class.
He gets a B minus. He's really PO'd on that. The teacher says, I'll give you an A if you send it to Washington. He does that. He does send the flag to the White House.
And he claims, and this is the story for decades, that his Design was adopted by President Eisenhower as the new 50-star flag when Hawaii and Alaska came in the Union. And I got the flag right here. I know this is radio, but I'm going to pick it up. I have the original flag. The stream was streaming.
The original flag. This is the 1958 Bob Heft flag that he sent to the White House.
So clarify this for a second, because you have 13 colonies, but every time we added a colony, we would add a star. Yeah, every time we added it. And then in the beginning, we would add a stripe, too. Yeah, the flag code says 13 alternating red and white stripes and a new star on a blue field for every time a new state is added. That is all it says.
So we went to the Eisenhower Library and Museum in Abilene, Kansas, and they have all the records of the Eisenhower administration. And they said, when I asked, what's the rules? What were the guidelines? And they said there weren't any. They had to make it up because the only guidelines are what I just said.
In 1958 and 1959, a huge wave of Interest in the two new states, kids around the country, and people start sending in their designs to the White House. 1,900 flags and flag designs were sent in, and some of these are wild. And we have them, our show is Crazy American History on Fox Nation, streaming now. And you'll see some of these, like the red and white, the white stars with the blue. Vertical on the left.
I mean things that you've never seen before.
So I want you to hear, this is Bob Heft.
Now he passed away.
So this sounds like what year? Yeah, this is 2004. He passed away in 2009. Here's his story, Cut 49. I, of course, designed the flag of our country, our current flag.
Meet Bob Heft. He says, before he knew it, he got a call from President Dwight D. Eisenhower himself. And I picked up the phone. He said, I wanted to let you know that I selected your flag as the official flag of our country.
And the rest is history. The 50-star flag we celebrate today is all thanks. To Bob?
So would you say up into the 50s is when they stopped adding stripes when a state was added? No, no, they always had the same stripes. It's the stars that were added.
So there was a 49-star flag when Alaska came in. That was only for like, I don't know, six, seven, eight months. Then when Hawaii came in, it was officially displayed on July 4th, 1960, as is tradition over Fort McHenry at 12.01 in the morning. And that is. The basis of the current American flag.
It's the six alternating six stars with the five, and that was Bob Heff's design. The big issue, though, is critics say, no, he didn't design the flag. He just sent it in. There's no evidence that he actually, the White House actually acknowledged that his was the flag.
So you looked at everything. You could not find it. But Bob Heff said Eisenhower called him. Yeah. That's what he says.
He says Eisenhower called him. He said a lot. He said a lot, Brian, through the years. He said that he flew the flag, got it flown over 50 state capitals. At first, I'm like, no.
Well, guess what? I've seen the letters from 40 governors. He did get the flag, which we have right here, flown over 40 state capitals. But the story, I think, really is about. One man and the flag and what it means to us as Americans, the freedoms that we value and hold so dear.
And here was a patriotic man who had this story. For decades, speaking to kids and veterans and school groups, claiming that he designed the flag. That's why it's such a fascinating, crazy American story. Yeah, so you also have another one of your stories: you know, after 1783, we win the war. But we set up a very loose federal government.
We're 13 colonies, we're really doing their own thing. They were not really laced together strongly because everyone feared a king. They said, We just lost that. The last thing we want is a king or a president that was going to be cracking the whip that's never going to leave.
So we had the Articles of Confederation. Take it from there. Yeah, Articles of Confederation 1781. And we look at who the first president. The real first President of the United States is.
If you ask everyone, they'll say George Washington.
Well, there's a whole group of historians who say, no, he was not. The first President of the United States was President John Hansen because he was elected by the delegates on November 5th, 1781, as President of the United States. In Congress assembled. Here is a cut from that moment, cut fifty. Who was the first President of the United States?
Frederick Marilyn's John Hanson. Tell us a bit about who John Hansen was. He was the first president of the first government. We're on the second one right now, famously begun with Washington's inauguration in 1789. But for eight years before that, we had our original government with its Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, and its presidents who served one-year terms.
Did he do anything? Yeah, he did. That was Peter Michael, who's a descendant of John Hanson. He's written the biography of John Hanson called President John Hanson. Yeah, he did.
Mr. Michael points out that during the Hanson administration, they established the first bank. There was a war cabinet, a cabinet positions of foreign affairs, war, finance. John Hansen and the Congress established Thanksgiving at that time. Hansen, and during his administration, they sent Benjamin Franklin and John Adams over to Paris for the Treaty of Paris to negotiate.
Negotiate the surrender of the British Empire.
So. He says that his ancestor is one of the great he's the founding father, is one of the great Americans who actually put the country together. There was no government or country when he started. He said, after the end of that first term, we had. A functioning government.
So was he part, was he a signer of the Declaration of Independence? No, I fan, I don't know. But he was a delegate from Maryland. That is episode number two.
Now, episode number three, you label the New York Power Couple. Yes. Captain Kidd, right? You've heard of him. Infamous pirate.
You think of pirates on the high seas killing people and swashbuckling and burying their treasure all over the place. Captain Kidd. Was a wealthy New York guy. He was married. He had two young daughters.
He had a mansion. He and his wife were top socialites. No one knows about this. He had this whole life in New York City. He'd be hodmobbling around the Hamptons now if he was here.
And we focus on this unknown part of an infamous pirate. Did he have two identities or was he known that? No, he'd be Mr. Abouttown New York Socialite American while he was here. They didn't go out on the high seas for like a year, two years.
Almost like Superman to have two identities. I wrote a little song to remind you: Choice Hotels gets you more of the experiences you value. The Cambria Hotel's got it all. A rooftop ball, have a ball. Bring a date, your squad, or even your mom.
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Must be 21 or older to order. Please drink responsibly. Here's a little from episode three. They were New York's power couple. New York's power couple, Captain Kidd?
Yes. They had a very normal life. They had two children. He was a family man. You don't think of that as a pirate like that?
No, you don't. And he was very educated. He wrote beautiful, beautiful letters. He had a fabulous. Signature.
So, who are you talking about? Yeah, that's Daphne Jettikopoulos. She's written the book, The Pirate's Wife, the amazing story about Sarah Kidd, who was Captain Kidd's wife. You know what the buried treasure? I mean, you're a historian.
You've written about Long Island and the Washington Spy Ring. You know all about history. Guess where Captain Kidd's some of his treasure was buried? Where? Long Island.
Where? Out on Gardner's Island. Gardner's Island is between the two forks of the north and south of Long Island. It is a private island. Since 1630-something, it was under the Gardner family, and it still is.
It is the most exclusive. You can't go there, Eric Sean. You cannot. We tried. It's still in the family, the Gardner family.
Now they are the goulettes. They own the island. You're trespassing if you go on it. But Captain Kidd, when he was a pirate, he came back after a three-year voyage and he was going to face charges of piracy.
So he buried some of his booty on Gardner's Island: gold, silver, a 45-pound chest, a rare silk. And there's a marker on the island where Captain Kidd buried his treasure. And some think that there's still treasure around because we know that he started stashing it. To protect his family in Connecticut, in Rhode Island, rumors of it being in New Jersey. But so far, the only booty of Captain Kidd that's been dug up was that chest in Gardner's Island that he buried in 1699.
What was in it? Gold, silver, gold, silks. There's some spices that we don't know about. Sugar. Sugar was very rare at the time.
And that was dug up. And in fact, the East Hampton Library, they have a piece of silk that he gave to Mary, no, Julia Gardner, the Gardner's wife.
So it's still there. People don't know that he buried Treasure in the U.S. How many episodes do you have? We have three episodes now. It's Fox Nation, Crazy American History.
And we're just starting. Eric, thanks so much. First off, I know you started off as a New York, with New York as your beat. How does Mondami stack up to the past mayors from Bloomberg, Giuliani, to de Blasio? Where would you put Mondami, which you've seen so far?
He's way out there on the left side. Look, I think Ed Koch, who to me was the great mayor, would be rolling in his grave right now. Just you can't, and de Blasio fell into this issue. You cannot be. A far-left ideologue and be against capitalism and be the mayor of the greatest city in New York.
Ephiro LaGuardia. Said it best. He said there's no Republican or Democratic way to pave the streets, make the city safe, get fill the potholes, make the trains run on time, then you got a great mayor. Right. And and this mayor in particular just got it passed to freeze rents.
Landlords are the bad guys.
So now you're going to exceed these apartments go to disrepair. There's going to be no money to fix them and maybe condemned. Yeah, we saw that in the South Bronx of the 1970s. That caused the neighborhoods to go downhill. And so we'll have to see what happens with it.
Maybe the goal is for the city to buy those apartments and then decide who goes in them. Yeah, you know what? I'm speechless. You can tell. It's scary.
No. I don't know. I hope he gets it. I don't think he does. And I've been studying the mayoralty of New York.
I majored in it at Georgetown. And I just, we've never seen someone like this ever. And I just hope he understands the city government. Good luck. Right.
Eric Sean, thanks so much. And congratulations on your series, Crazy American History, available right now on Fox Nation. You can follow Eric on at Eric Sean TV.
