Review: Adam Ruins Everything “100 Years Ago Today “

Adam wraps the animated portion of his latest season.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Panama Canal

The canal was built after America overthrew the Colombian government and effectively created the country of Panama. When the Panama government came to power, American gusto helped scare the local populace into making the Canal happen. Five thousand workers died building it and those living it didn’t have it so great. The workers were segregated and paid based on color.

Food-borne illnesses

Harvey Wiley is the reason why we have labels on food and keeping food producers accountable for what they sell. Before this, 10,000 people died a year from food-borne illnesses except Congress wasn’t exactly on the right side of history on this one. Food lobbyists made sure Congress stayed in line but President Roosevelt got involved and decided to make amends. With the help of the newly founded FDA, America became the top producer of food in the world.

Spanish Flu

Even more dangerous than war, disease. One hundred million people were killed by the Spanish flu which may have also helped tip the favors during the first World War. Officials on both sides decided to sweep the severity of the flu under the rug and as it turns out, Spain had nothing to do with where the flu originated from. Worst yet, we could have another flu pandemic on the horizon that does damage like this despite the fact we keep cutting funding for the CDC.

Same time, different place

Turns out the real Laurence of Arabia was a swindler and he’s probably a large part as to why we have so much conflict in that region today. 

Our Take

Adam Ruins Everything finishes up its animated six-episode run with a generous reminder of why it’s important to have fact-based logic in historical lecture instead of just accepting everything we’ve been taught up to this point. Give a shout out to the always reliable Chris Parnell as our narrator and to Adam Conover for putting together a really well-done slew of episodes that taught us all sorts of fun and interesting information that hopefully educates the masses into doing their own research.