What happens
Timothy Dexter, a Massachusetts merchant after the American Revolution, makes a string of odd business ventures that somehow pay off. He buys worthless Continental currency, ships a cargo of cats to Cuba to fight a rat problem, and sends coal to Newcastle. The stories are told in the Strange As It Seems program, narrated by John Hicks, with its episodes of unusual true events. The broadcast then moves on to a Mrs. America beauty contest winner from New Jersey and the life of scientist George Washington Carver, from his childhood on a Missouri plantation to his peanut research. The episode closes with General Israel Putnam's unusual duel with a British major.
Post-Revolution Massachusetts and the West Indies, a 1939 beauty contest, Missouri and Alabama in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and Hudson River country during the Revolutionary War
Characters: Timothy Dexter, Alexander Hamilton, Captain Seyz, Mrs. Armand Donnaruma, Moses Carver, Joe, George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington
Listen for: The Timothy Dexter stories of the cats and the coal, and the Putnam duel with the powder keg
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.