Onions scandals should not be leeked to the press.

@eileenspamer

Ай бұрын

@bartsanders1553

Ай бұрын

Hey kid, beet it with the puns.

@BonnieBlue2A

Ай бұрын

scandalous would be scallion-esque ?

@CAP198462

Ай бұрын

Cheese, I’m getting tired of puns. Every comments section is just peppered with them.

@joshuabessire9169

Ай бұрын

Whey did you ❤️ him THG? You're just egging them on.

Is it weird that I would rather watch a short documentary about onion futures trading than nearly any network produced TV show?

@katiesiouxlamoureaux7757

24 күн бұрын

Nope,I totally agree

@rocarr180

22 күн бұрын

❤️🙏

@ambercrombie789

18 күн бұрын

No. "Wisdom is known by her children".

@danstevens2204

11 күн бұрын

That’s why we are here 👍🏻

4:15 -- "But the market for butter spread thin..." Funny guy. -_-

@ouroboris

Ай бұрын

He definitely has a way with words 😆

@Sniperboy5551

Ай бұрын

His alliteration is also beautiful, his scripts are like poetry at times

@Russia-bullies

Ай бұрын

As I spread them thick,I don’t get why the guy is funny.

@garandm1d

Ай бұрын

... Spread thin... Eggs in one basket...That's why I love the history guy...

So much fun has started with “two guys in Chicago.”

@Metalkatt

Ай бұрын

It’s A Hundred And Six Miles To Chicago. We Got A Full Tank Of Gas, Half A Pack Of Cigarettes. It's Dark, And We're Wearing Sunglasses

@NoBSRecoverfacts

29 күн бұрын

Cringe

@ZeusTheIrritable

27 күн бұрын

@@Metalkatt Hit It.

@nancybaumgartner6774

11 күн бұрын

That, and “Florida man…”

You rapscallion, you.

_"If making money is a crime, then I'm guilty."_ He didn't make money. He extorted money.

@EddieVBlueIsland

27 күн бұрын

Only because dishonest people believed him

@paulthiessen6444

26 күн бұрын

@@EddieVBlueIslandgreedy people anyways

@bobbsurname3140

20 күн бұрын

​@@EddieVBlueIslandWere the onion farmers who didnt want their crop to become worthless dishonest?

@AdamBechtol

10 күн бұрын

Good point.

It takes a real talent to make commodity trading and onion farming into a fascinating story. Well done, sir.

@pilotjoe4010

Ай бұрын

You could say it has layers…

@lisaboban

Ай бұрын

@@pilotjoe4010 So many layers ☺️

@Dogdrule

Ай бұрын

Honestly, Planet Money did an episode on it years back that has stuck with me more than any other in a catalog of many hundreds of episodes. It's a fascinating tale despite seemingly dry elements like commodity trading and futures

So glad The History Guy mentioned, "Trading Places" because that movie immediately came to mind when discussing "future's commodities."

@jburron

18 күн бұрын

Commodity futures.

We have an odd, kind of family heirloom. It's a still life painting of onions. The story goes that the painting belonged to a railroad VP in California who loved onions but for whatever reason could not eat them. Apparently the VP was a distant relative of the family. The painting was given to my father when he was a young man working in machining factory in the years before WWII. An odd story? Yes, and I've always doubted it's veracity. However it's a very nice painting. 😄

@drewzero1

Ай бұрын

That's fascinating! I can't eat onions and neither can my mother. I don't think I've heard of anyone outside my family that reacts to them.

@jaymzx0

Ай бұрын

I love family stories like this.

@elizabethsohler6516

Ай бұрын

@@drewzero1 I have a friend who can't eat onions. I believe he has diverticulitis.

@wheressteve

Ай бұрын

A multi layered family onion painting mystery sounds nice, we're still trying to find out what happened to Dad after he went to the store for cigarettes in 1973.

@wheressteve

Ай бұрын

Ji.bo.... 9

Mortimer and Randolph Duke would be proud.

@DavidHBurkart

Ай бұрын

Wouldn't that actually be Louis and Billy-Ray? Morty and Randy didn't recover from that until the 1990's following a windfall gift from a foreign prince!! 😂😂😂

@user-uo2gn7lc6y

4 күн бұрын

😂 😂 😂

What’s better than French onion soup? Vampires love onions. My cousin vacationed in Transylvania for two weeks and wore a ring of garlic around his neck. The next year he returned to Transylvania but couldn’t find garlic to make a necklace. He made one out of onions. We never saw him again.

@robertsaget6918

20 күн бұрын

This happened to my wife but in Spain. The last time I saw her she was walking away with two vampires wearing expensive suits who gave me a plane ticket home.

@mimisor66

13 күн бұрын

He's probably still there, farming onions...😊

The most-accepted Chicago meaning is a word that comes from the Algonquin language: “shikaakwa,” meaning “striped skunk” or “onion.” According to early explorers, the lakes and streams around Chicago were full of wild onions, leeks, and ramps. Appropriate that Chicago played such a huge part in this story.

@topherthe11th23

Ай бұрын

@timothysworld1028 - Chicago was named by the Spanish after a line in a tragic love-poem wherein the hero realizes that though he loves a certain woman, they can never be together. So he says "You must go, Chica, go" (using "go" instead of "va" because it's in the border-dialect that briefly existed along the river that forms the border between Castile and Sussex).

@Foolish188

Ай бұрын

Ramps...Oh do I want some ramps right now. Once found a large patch deep in the woods behind our house as a kid. I swore my family to secrecy about the location, but my Mother told several people. A year later they had all been stolen. I will die with the secret of the locations of my current patches.

@johnnixon4085

Ай бұрын

​@Foolish188 I planted 100 bulbs 2 years ago. Last year I tasted a couple leaves. They're just coming up now, but I expect to be able to take enough leaves to make some ramp butter, and to hopefully get some seed to scatter. Hopefully next year I can take a few bulbs.

@tissuepaper9962

Ай бұрын

@@topherthe11th23 very few questions in etymology can be answered with the unwavering confidence you have put on display in your comment. It's foolish to accept either story as absolute fact, unless you can provide a definitive primary source (which I know you can't).

@topherthe11th23

Ай бұрын

@@tissuepaper9962 I have a manuscript on parchment, dated 1460. Unfortunately it is in such delicate condition that even merely taking a photograph of it could be detrimental to its preservation. Subjecting it to public examination must remain out of the question for now. This means that the best evidence you can get is my assurance that the manuscript exists, since you can't get any evidence to the contrary. This makes you honor-bound to believe what it says. This is how scholarship works. Best evidence available. (I.e. not "best evidence imaginable" which may not be possible.)

I wore an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time... 😂

@NelsonZAPTM

Ай бұрын

Was it a brown onion? Or one of the white ones that was fashionable at the time?

@danwolf307

Ай бұрын

Thank you!😂

@emceeboogieboots1608

Ай бұрын

Here it is! Onya Abe 👍

@TTOS69

29 күн бұрын

What. The. Fck. Are you from the 1800s??

@PhilWithCoffee

27 күн бұрын

I was looking for this lol

I'm surprised that box office futures was even considered given how infamous Hollywood accounting is.

@skyden24195

Ай бұрын

That is probably why it was considered, i.e., given how infamous Hollywood accounting is.

Guy turned good later, that's not normally how bad onions work.

@guessundheit6494

Ай бұрын

And south american drug lords put money into their communities. So what's your point?

@DavidHBurkart

Ай бұрын

😂😂😂

@eldorados_lost_searcher

Ай бұрын

You could say that he had layers to his personality.

@BTScriviner

Ай бұрын

A lot of those robber barons/shady capitalists turn to philanthropy later in life.

@pgtv14

Ай бұрын

Steals a boatload of money and gives (some) of it away to boost his own reputation. Real nice guy he was -_-

That last joke has me crying 😢 I don't know why!

@robertriteman3227

4 күн бұрын

" the butter market had spread thin" such a great slip in line

I love that little nod to Trading Places at the end. On a side note people selling short on major films released in 2023 could have made a fortune.

@inthefade

26 күн бұрын

Just shorting Disney world have been a good idea

@robertriteman3227

4 күн бұрын

" the butter market had spread thin" such a great slip in line

I can’t imagine being a farmer and then stealing from all the other farmers knowing how hard it is to stay afloat. What an actual pos. Makes me sick

@jodyssey9921

Ай бұрын

Ruthlessness is the most important quality if you want to be rich. That's why rich people are all assholes.

@advicepirate8673

Ай бұрын

If only the rest of us were willing to give people like that the one time payment in lead that they deserve. But most of us are no better, we have a system wherein mice happily vote for cats in the delusional hope that they will one day become the cat.

@tissuepaper9962

Ай бұрын

@@jodyssey9921 you have to step on other people's faces to make it up the ladder to wealth. There's a good reason why Jesus told the young rich man to sell all his possessions and give to the poor, and why it is said that a camel can be more easily be drawn through the eye of a needle than can a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven. You can't get rich without screwing people, it's a simple fact.

Layers? ... like an ogre? ...

@skyden24195

Ай бұрын

You know what else has layers? Parfaits. Everyone likes a parfait. Ask anyone if they'd like a parfait. Ain't no one gonna say, "No, I don't want no parfait."

@Maudit_Anglais

Ай бұрын

Good one !

@Whatsinmygreygarage

Ай бұрын

Cake! Cake has layers!

@spvillano

Ай бұрын

Ogres, onions, you mean smelly and make people cry?

"...the market for butter was spread thin"? Ahhaha 😂 Sir, only you could get away with that.

@robertriteman3227

4 күн бұрын

as soon as he said i thought " genius"

It brings a tear to my eye that politicians can't put the same effort behind solving real problems as they did to stop trade in onion futures.

One year Mom got me an onion for Christmas. I looked right at her and ate it raw. I still like onions and I learned a valuable lesson. Don't make Mama mad.

@peterestrada9420

Ай бұрын

Since I was a kid, I have eaten onions, like apples, but ☝️covered with Mustard & Black Pepper; Tomatoes, as well🤤😋🤣

@peterestrada9420

Ай бұрын

Salt & Watermelon 🍉 🧂 is pretty good too🤙😉

@poetryflynn3712

Ай бұрын

Ever hear of Vidalia onions? Supposedly they're sweet like apples!

@sooz9433

Ай бұрын

​They are! ​@@poetryflynn3712 The ones that are as big around as softballs but only an inch or so tall are the best ones.

@tygrkhat4087

Ай бұрын

@@peterestrada9420 My dad did that.

Lesson: Don't cry over spilled onions.

It brought tears to my eyes at how you peeled this subject, sliced then diced its many layers.

@zyxw2000

14 күн бұрын

And then leeked the information to us.

Having grown onions at scale, actively traded commodities futures, and secretly desiring the cheat code to large piles of money this story is one of my all-time favorites, right up there with The Idles of March and the Manhattan Project.

That Vincent Kosuga, he really knew his onions...

Chicago MEANS Onion in the Fox and Mesquaki language. They are the same people who named the major river of America the Mississippi, a Fox and Mesquaki word which means Plenty Of Fish.

I have some apples, would you like to buy them? Yes, please. That's how hard it should be to operate a Business. Also, dueling should be brought back. You might be able to say "buy my onions or else" 1 or 2 times but by number 10 you're surely missing an ear.

Welcome to class. The mid-term has been cancelled. Enjoy the weekend.

@CAP198462

Ай бұрын

But I spent all night studying for it 😢.

@JeffreyGlover65

Ай бұрын

​@@CAP198462I was gonna cheat off your answers...🤔

@davea6314

Ай бұрын

​@@JeffreyGlover65 You're suspended from school. 😜

@danstotland6386

Ай бұрын

Gee Thanks!

So instead of preventing the same sort of market cornering to be done again, they just made it impossible for 2 very specific products.

@spvillano

Ай бұрын

And started an in-joke in the Adams family, where Gomez would comment on the price of pork bellies in multiple episodes.

That dude sounds like a pirate to me. ^^

@TheHistoryGuyChannel

Ай бұрын

The Onion Pirate!

@juliao1255

Ай бұрын

...After all, don't all good stories have pirates? (Sorry, but someone had to say it.)

@Pygar2

Ай бұрын

@@TheHistoryGuyChannel This man really knows his onions!

@jonmccormick6805

Ай бұрын

@@juliao1255 Yes, and I was thinking it too!

I'm not sure if there is a History Guy video to be made, but tobacco is the most valuable crop in the world for which there is no organized market or trading. I was briefly involved some years ago with one the largest tobacco brokers, which bought directly from farmers and sold to tobacco companies around the world. There is a lot more to supplying the different types of tobacco to the cigarette manufacturers than you could possibly imagine!

I have always looked on futures trading as a sort of scam as it just seems to susceptible to stuns like this one.

@Foolish188

Ай бұрын

A very useful scam. For both farmers who can sell at a guaranteed profit and buyers who can buy at a guaranteed price, eliminating their risk of a higher price. Speculators provide the liquidity for the farmers and buyers.

@spvillano

Ай бұрын

Interestingly, just last week, Trump Media filed a complaint with the SEC claiming some mystery party was short selling Truth Social to manipulate the prices of their stock. Totally has to be true, can't be that a company that's losing tons of money has an overinflated stock value... Still, gambling and the stock market, ever a match made in the realm of the afterlife, such gambling working out ever so well in the 1920's.

My hat is of to you, the king of dad jokes.

I'd heard of this but was waiting for an expert to peel back all the layers. Speaking of layers, the infinitely tangled complexities affecting egg-production are the reason the earlier commodity-trading in eggs mentioned from 3:53 to 5:00 died out. Every investor lacked the ability to digest all the layers in the egg-business.

Lance is in fine form today.....

This story brought tears to my eyes.

@robertriteman3227

4 күн бұрын

" the butter market had spread thin" such a great slip in line

One of your best, definitely top ten. Can you imagine over 1000 gondola cars full of onions? I have ridden in a gondola car full of sweet potatoes. At about 50 feet long, that is about 9.5 miles long.

I had a friend who was a chef. I once asked him what’s the most important vegetable. He said onions.

@danktankdragkings7117

Ай бұрын

as a professional prep cook 100% onion.

@stevenschnepp576

Ай бұрын

Beyond a shadow of a doubt. Just look at how many recipes are ruined without it, and how few substitutes for it there really are.

@goodun2974

Ай бұрын

Louisiana cooking relies upon what they call the Trinity: onion, celery and bell pepper.

@wisecoconut5

Ай бұрын

Totally. I am just an average home cook, but I keep 3 or 4 kinds of onions on hand all the time. Sweet, purple, yellow, leeks ( when available), and green onions. But shallots are great, too.

@tygrkhat4087

Ай бұрын

When I was a dishwasher, I hated to clean the bowls of French onion soup. I asked the chef why we served it, he said it cost $0.50 to make and we charged $8.50 a bowl.

I think Chicago means “Smells like onions” in local native tongue.

@Torby4096

Ай бұрын

Even more, bad smelly onions.

The most-accepted Chicago meaning is a word that comes from the Algonquin language: “shikaakwa,” meaning “striped skunk” or “onion.” According to early explorers, the lakes and streams around Chicago were full of wild onions, leeks, and ramps.

Man, this guy sure knows his turnips.

Well done. Very interesting topic. Especially as I plant our own onions in 2024

Here’s a butter and onion related experience for you: I grew up on a dairy farm in Georgia. My father and grandfather farmed together and had about 330 dairy cows. One unfortunate day, the cows broke down a fence and got into a neighbor’s empty field, which was rife with wild onions. Cows LOVE wild onions, but the resulting milk - pee-ew. Three days of milk had to be discarded, until all traces of onion smell were gone. I will never forget the odor and appearance of the curdled milk in the two big tanks, which as I recall held 3,000 and 5,000 gallons respectively. I still cannot eat French onion dip.

Hang on: the Ferris Beuller movie had a running joke referencing "The Sausage King of Chicago" - was that a reference to this guy? I never knew.

@TheHistoryGuyChannel

Ай бұрын

Chicago has a lot of kings…

@gloriamontgomery6900

Ай бұрын

It was this guy who killed his wife and put her in a vat of acid in his sausage factory. They found a ring and her false teeth which were enough to identify her

@mrdanforth3744

Ай бұрын

There was a screwball comedy called The Palm Beach Story that had a character called The Weenie King who made his fortune manufacturing weenies.

Onions with steak and mushrooms?...Yummy! Cue the Susan Christie song, "I Love Onions?"

Now I can't get the smell of rotting onions out of my mind ...

@Linusgump

Ай бұрын

I was thinking the same thing. 🤮

@alcedob.5850

27 күн бұрын

aw heck, got a flashback from 2020 when for like 3 months the only stink I could feel was the stink of rotting onions

I don't which is greater, THG's love of history or making dad jokes.😅

Somehow I'm not surprised that this happened in Chicago

Shades of "Trading Places." Orange juice, anyone? 🤣

Shorting has a finite reward, while it has a potentially infinite loss.

The very worst of human nature on display...this kind of evil is the reason the World is such a horrible place.

@AdamBechtol

10 күн бұрын

Mmmm

Shrek would not approve of what these two guys did to mess up the onion market.

Two of my great passions coming together, onions and scandals.

I really appreciate all the puns you sprinkled throughout this clip. Thank you for all that you do. We learn so much from you😊

What's the difference between an onion and an accordion? No one crys when you cut up an accordion.

This story brings tears to my eyes

Mr. Lance, I must say that you MORE THAN earn my devotion to your channel every week. You must be a tireless researcher to document so many stories so well with nary a break. I am truly in awe.

I always wished I was smarter, never outsmarted anyone in my whole life.

When I was in college (between the fall of 1966 and spring of 1970), there was a Great Winter Onion Shortage. The price of onions shot up, then they disappeared from the shelves. You couldn't get one for love nor money. It was a great day in the morning when they returned. Does anyone else remember this?

But it was the style at the time!

All those onions dumped into the Chicago River must have been a interesting story in themselves.

14:34 FCOJ but Pork Bellies were also part of the plot when Valentine was tested on when and what price to sell.

My best friend thought that he was so smart. He said to me that onions were the only food that made you cry...then I threw a coconut at his face! 😂🧅🥥

Hey THG, my first time commenting. Love the Channel, great videos. This was a great video, super informative. I love onions, keep up the great content

4:23 I am commenting in the middle of the piece to express how delighted and amused I am by your well-placed and accurate puns. Thank you. You remind me of my HS physics teacher. All the dad-joke punny humor one could stomach and I was all there for it. Keep it up!

WHY?? oh why DOES THE HISTORY GUY PEAL BACK EVENTS THAT BRING TEARS TO OUR EYES??? 😂😂

A possible topic for another video - I long ago read in a book that in the 1800s, an investor set about cornering the market for rags used in making paper, but that just as he was completing a major step in the process, wood-pulp paper was made available and the market for rag paper was hopelessly undercut. I have not been able to find further information, and it may be an apocryphal warning story.

Reminds me of the great butter and dairy shortage in the northwest and Oregon that involved a bunch of corrupt cops laundering butter through a diner and murdering and stealing products from creameries all around the region like it was cash from a vault. The Dollop did a live episode about that story: kzread.info/dash/bejne/fpmn2sajosi3f7w.html

More puns and bad jokes per square pixel in this episode than any i can remember before!

Brilliant! Caveat Emptor!

Onions, salt, butter, eggs. Are you trying to make me hungry? Are you begging the question of bacon?

@zyxw2000

14 күн бұрын

The four food groups. Onions, salt, butter, eggs.

If you ain’t shorting onions and buying puts are you even investing?

I never knew there was an onion stock market scandal. lol. I a learning so much from these videos. Thank you so much for making these.

I'm surprised that Vince didn't end up sleeping with the onions.

@BrilliantDesignOnline

Ай бұрын

Sounds like he made more enemies than profits.

At a common sleep area, we had one guy who would insist on eating a raw onion sandwich and waft it throughout the dormitory….yuck

I often traveled with my family on the way to Port Jervis New York, through Pine Island New York, a town known for growing onions, in a broad flat valley of pure black soil. Listening to this episode, I wondered if Pine Island would be mentioned, and was not disappointed. The area is quite beautiful, and it is amazing how black the soil is.

Onions and potatoes, two of the best vegetables. They work with basically anything.

Onions are said to be among the most nutritious of garden vegetables. When I was a kid, Mom would sometimes have a saucer of onion sections on the table. I gnoshed on onion along with other parts of the meal. When I worked with Boy Scouts on canoeing and camping expeditions, I would add onion sections to the meal. The boys liked them, and gobbled them down Courtesy of Half Vast Flying

I use to drive through Pine Island, you could smell the onions in the air

My grandmother would make onion sandwiches. Butter bread with sliced onions.

A lot of onion farmers got skinned.

@zyxw2000

14 күн бұрын

That's not an appealing story.

@Paladin1873

14 күн бұрын

@@zyxw2000 🙂

Fantastic episode! The ending elicited a healthy chuckle! Thank you for all your hard work getting to the root of the issue! You are no dim bulb!

When I was up north, in the high Artic, people would eat raw spanish onions because they tasted like apples. This happens when you do not eat frest vegetables for a long time.

I kind of learned about commodities from TRADING PLACES!

Every time someone is getting rich, you can guarantee someone somewhere is getting screwed, being exploited or is indentured to make it possible.

Trading Places is one of my favorite movies.

@JimDean002

28 күн бұрын

I'm sure this video is Billy Ray Valentine approved

you need a counter down in the corner tracking the puns. the chicken/egg episode would make it explode

A shining example of why Human greed needs to be regulated; heavily regulated, for the benefit of society as a whole.

@paulweeldreyer7457

2 күн бұрын

Regulation makes things more expensive.

I like onions. They taste good. Sometimes they make me cry, though.

Take a shot every time there’s a food related pun

I'm sure this has been said, but this episode had me weeping.

Hey History Guy 🤓 and Classmates which onion 🌰 do you like best Green Onions 🌰 Red onions 🧅 or White onions ?🧅

@juliao1255

Ай бұрын

Vidalia

@minuteman4199

Ай бұрын

Depends on what you're doing with them. In salads, red, in stews and soups, yellow, on a hamburger, white.

A whole lot of tears were Shedd

Attempting to be an Onion King always ends in tears. I am sorry but he did it first :(

Well, at least the onions I grow in my garden are free and not under contract 😎.

Leave it to humanity to ruin onions with money

It's official: The History Guy can make any subject ap-peel-ing, no matter how many layers he has to unwrap.

Incredible story of unbelievable manipulation and how he made that 8 million is stupendous ! I was a price & research reporter for the Chicago Board of Trade and found the story to be riveting !

That's something to cry about