Mrs. O'Leary's Cow Was Framed
In 1893, the reporter who wrote the cow story admitted he made it up. Chicago's City Council formally apologized in 1997. The cow was unavailable for comment.
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The most hated woman in America in 1871 was an Irish immigrant who was asleep. The internet still says her cow kicked over a lantern and burned down Chicago. So we pulled the records.
October 8, 1871, around 9 pm: a barn behind Catherine O'Leary's cottage on DeKoven Street caught fire after three months of drought, in a city built of wood down to the sidewalks. By morning roughly 17,450 buildings were gone, about 300 people were dead, and 100,000 were homeless. The city needed a villain and picked the poor, foreign woman who lived next to the barn.
The official 1871 inquiry never blamed the cow. Its finding, in its own words: "whether it originated from a spark blown from a chimney on that windy night, or was set on fire by human agency, we are unable to determine." In 1893, reporter Michael Ahern admitted he invented the lantern story to make his copy more colorful. Chicago's City Council formally exonerated Catherine O'Leary in 1997 — 102 years after her death. The cow was unavailable for comment.
And the headlines buried something worse. The same night, 250 miles north, the Peshtigo fire killed as many as 2,500 people — the deadliest fire in American history. You've never heard of it.
Verdict: BS. The receipts are at bskiller.com/reels.
Sources: Chicago History Museum (greatchicagofire.org), Richard F. Bales (2002), 1997 Chicago City Council resolution, NWS, Smithsonian Magazine, History.com.
Every claim in the film, checked against the record.
The full receipts — every claim, every source, checked against the record — are for BSKiller members. That is the whole point of the show: the receipts.