Knocker and Chisholm's Leather Emporium (Nurses week) - That Was Genius Episode 64

Ooh er matron, it's nurses week! 

Sam kicks us off with the tale of WW1 best mates, motorbike daredevils and fearless first-aiders Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm, whose bravery in setting up an independent nursing station just metres from the trenches near Ypres earned them fame, medals and more.

Next, after a light-hearted start, Tom takes us on a rare serious trip to the Bangka Island massacre of 1942, and Australian nurse Vivian Bullwinkel. Vivian was one of just a few survivors of a Japanese massacre after she, several dozen other nurses and civilians, and a few soldiers were shipwrecked. She went on to spend the war helping troops in a POW camp, and lived a completely normal life after WW2, never talking about at least some of the other horrors she endured. An amazing story, but not one for the faint-hearted!

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Welcome to That Was Genius: Two blokes. An immature sense of humour. And 10,000 years of human civilisation. A weekly podcast looking at the weirder side of history.

Join Sam Datta-Paulin (he likes history and lives in Britain) and Tom Berry (he also likes history and used to live in New Zealand but is now in the UK as well), for a weekly reflection on the bold, the brilliant... And the downright strange.

From bizarre events and stories to equally odd inventions, barely a day goes by without something incredible (or incredibly stupid) happening around the world.

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