Today In History with The Retrospectors
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Today In History with The Retrospectors
Curious, funny, surprising daily history - with Olly Mann, Rebecca Messina and Arion McNicoll. From the invention of the Game Boy to the Mancunian beer-poisoning of 1900, from Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain to America's Nazi summer schools... each day we uncover an unexpected story for the ages...
Recent Episodes
1171 episodes
Is That Mary Magdalene?
Inspired by a dream, Prince Charles of Provence ordered an excavation that uncovered a sarcophagus believed to contain the remains of Mary Magdalene o...
The Muppets Do Dickens
‘The Muppet Christmas Carol’ underwhelmed at the box office when it was first released on 11th December, 1992 - but found its audience on video and DV...
Sinatra's Slapstick Kidnapping
19 year-old singer Frank Sinatra, Jr was snatched from his casino dressing room on 10th December, 1962. His famous father was willing to pay the kidna...
Welcome To Wetherspoons
Now a 900 strong pub chain, with an annual turnover of £1.6 billion, J.D. Wetherspoon is a big name on the British high street. But when entrepreneur...
Britain's First Actresses
A woman played a female role on the London stage for the very first time on December 8th, 1660, as Desdemona in a revival of Shakepeare’s Othello. The...
Who Needs A Switchboard?
Queen Elizabeth II made Britain’s first long-distance automated phone call on 5th November, 1958 - when, from Bristol, she spoke directly to the Lord...
What Happened to the Mary Celeste?
The ‘ghost ship’ Mary Celeste was discovered drifting in the Atlantic by Captain David Morehouse of the Dei Gratia on 4 December 1872. On board there...
The Potato-Porting Polymath
Renaissance Man Thomas Harriot was noted for many things - devising the theory of refraction, creating mathematical symbols including ‘greater than’ a...
Heidi Fleiss, Hollywood Madam
Tinseltown’s most notorious pimp was convicted of providing high-class ‘call girls’ to undercover police officers on 2nd December, 1994.
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The Vietnam Lottery
Which young men should be sent to fight in Vietnam? Amidst a growing public outcry against the biases in the system, the United States instituted a li...
The Sound of Luxury
In the annals of automotive innovation, November 28th, 2018 marked a peculiar milestone: the birth of the Lincoln Chimes. The brainchild of Jennifer P...
Alger Hiss and the Pumpkin Papers
The most notorious accused spy of the early Cold War, Alger Hiss, emerged from Lewisburg Penitentiary on 27th November, 1954; calm, composed, and dete...
Signal-Jamming Aliens
Your TV signal wobbles. An alien voice (albeit one with a Southern English accent...) seizes control of your set. And, instead of newsreader Andrew Ga...
Elizabeth of Russia's Bloodless Coup
Wearing an armoured breastplate, clasping a silver cross and seizing an Army spontoon, 31 year old Elizabeth Petrovna appeared at the HQ of the elite...
The First Boob Job
Dr. Vincenz Czerny performed the world’s first breast augmentation in Vienna on 24th November, 1893. After removing a benign tumour via a mastectomy,...
The First Hanukkah
When the Maccabees celebrated the recapture of Jerusalem from the Macedonian emperor Antiochus IV, they lit a menorah in the city's holy temple. The d...
Microsoft's Windows Gamble
Windows 1.0 came out on 20th November, 1985, introducing graphical user interface to the masses for the first time. Well, that was the concept, anyway...
London's First Olympics
After Mount Vesuvius erupted - and original hosts Rome pulled out - the British Olympic council sent a letter, dated 19th November, 1906, agreeing to...
William Tell's Apple Adventures
Switzerland’s most famous archer shot fruit off his own son’s head on 18th November, 1307. Or did he?
‘Chronicon Helveticum’ by Aegidiu...
The Star Wars Holiday Horror
The bizarre, incoherent ‘Star Wars Holiday Special’ was broadcast only once, on 17th November, 1978. Despite CBS signing up the stars of the original...
Let's Go On Strike
Workers involved in tomb construction in the Valley of the Kings staged the earliest recorded strike in history on 14th November, 1157 B.C. Having not...
Big Ben's First BONGGGG
Westminer’s most famous landmark, Big Ben, bongggged for the first time on 13th November, 1856, outside the not-yet-finished House of Commons. Londone...
The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze
Jules Leotard first somersaulted off a trapeze at Cirque Napoléon in Paris on 12th November, 1859. His act inspired gymnasts and circus performers the...
Alice Chaucer, Three Times A Wife
Geoffrey Chaucer’s granddaughter Alice was first married at the age of 11. She was granted a license to marry her third husband on 11th November, 1430...
How To Get To Sesame Street
Big Bird, Oscar and Bert & Ernie were first introduced to America’s children on 10th November, 1969, when Sesame Street made its small-screen debut. D...
Meteorite!
The first meteorite to crash land into Earth - and have its date recorded - impacted the hamlet of Ensisheim (in modern-day France, then Austria) on 7...
How '24' Changed TV
Real-time thriller ‘24’, starring Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, debuted on Fox on 6th November, 2001. The show’s use of split screens, constant ten...
Kublai Khan's Kamikaze Climbdown
The Mongols attempted to invade Japan on 5th November, 1274. Despite having a fleet of 900 ships, they failed - in part due to a ‘kamikaze’ typhoon th...
Digging Up King Tut
Tutankhamun’s tomb was discovered by a water boy who serendipitously stumbled on a buried staircase in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings on 4th November, 19...
Phil Spector's 'Phantom Voice'
The Crystals hit number one with their version of Gene Pitney’s ‘He’s a Rebel’ on 3rd November, 1962, but it was actually another of Phil Spector’s gi...
The BBC's Halloween Hoax
‘Ghostwatch’, a Halloween drama in the style of a documentary, reached 11 million viewers on its first and only UK broadcast on BBC 1, on 31st October...
The Slave Rebellion
Nat Turner, leader of the deadliest slave rebellion in U.S. history, was captured on 30th October, 1831. For over two months, he’d hidden out in the w...
The M25 - Britain's Biggest Carpark
Margaret Thatcher finally opened London’s first ring road - construction on which had begun in the 1970s - on 29th October, 1986, declaring: "I can't...
Jane Austen and the Profligate Prince
George IV’s impressive Library included all the novels of Jane Austen, for whom he had a particular fondness. But what was not known (until a receipt...
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
The brutal murder of Alan R. Schindler Jr. on 27th October 1992 revealed the harsh realities faced by LGBTQ+ individuals in the military. Schindler, a...
Mourning Jane Seymour
ing Henry VIII’s third wife, Queen Consort Jane Seymour, died aged just 29 on 24th October, 1537 - 12 days after giving birth to their son, future Kin...
Meet The Smurfs
Peyo’s comic album ‘Johan and Peewit’ provided the platform for The Smurfs’ debut on 23rd October, 1958 - a cameo that their Belgian creator considere...
Not The End Of The World
Jesus failed to show up on the day that came to be known as ‘The Great Disappointment’ - 22nd October, 1844. It was an embarrassment for the New Engla...
Madonna's Naked Photos
Berated by the tabloids as exhibitionist pornography, Madonna’s coffee table book, ‘Sex’, quickly sold out upon its release on 21st October, 1992.
Parachute!
Losing control of his monoplane at 2,000 ft, First Lieutenant Harold R. Harris made history on 20th October, 1922, when he became the first person to...