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...
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Unmasking New York's 'Mad Bomber'
George Metesky’s campaign of terror as ‘the Mad Bomber of New York’ ended abruptly on 22nd January, 1957. Between 1940 and 1956, he had planted at lea...
The Chastity Belt and the Frenchman
Henri Littière and his adulterous wife Suzanne thought they’d come up with a novel way to combat her philandering - by commissioning a custom-made cha...
Lalli and the Axe
According to Finnish legend, a peasant farmer named Lalli murdered the Christian missionary Bishop Henry on the ice of lake Köyliönjärvi on January 20...
Britain's Last Witch
Celebrated medium Helen Duncan was arrested on 19th January, 1944, when, midway through one of her séances, an undercover policeman dramatically revea...
Shooting 'Dr. No'
It had a budget of just $1 million, a lead actor wearing a toupee, and the baddie in the first draft of the script was a monkey. But the first James B...
Death By Molasses
A roaring wave of syrup swept through the North End of Boston on 15th January, 1919, in an event that claimed 21 lives, including 2 children, and came...
New York meets Snow White
Disney’s long-awaited feature ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ was rapturously received at Radio City, New York, inspiring three-hour queues for tick...
Henry IV and the Philosopher's Stone
It was today in history in 1404 that Henry IV issued the Act Against Multipliers, a ban on the mysterious art of creating or duplicating gold, more co...
Creating The National Trust
Octavia Hill, Hardwicke Rawnsley, and Sir Robert Hunter founded The National Trust on January 12, 1895, with an intention to preserve Britain’s natura...
Let's Bury Nelson
Naval commander Horatio Nelson became the first non-Royal to receive a full British state funeral on 9th January, 1806, when tens of thousands of mour...
Britain's First Black MPs
John Stewart was elected MP for Lymington, Hampshire on 8th January, 1833.
On paper, he seemed a textbook member of Britain’s elite: wea...
Here Come the Harlem Globetrotters ⛹🏾♂️
All-Black basketball team the Harlem Globetrotters travelled to Hinckley, Illinois on 7th January, 1927 - setting them on a barnstorming journey throu...
Rink-O-Mania!
Roller skates, most readily associated with the 1970s, were actually first patented in the US on 6th January, 1863, by New York furniture salesman Jam...
Alfred Dreyfus: From Officer To Outcast
An angry crowd hurled abuse and antisemitic slurs at Captain Alfred Dreyfus on 5th January, 1895, as he stood in the courtyard of the École Militaire...
Best Of 2025: The 'Ten Cent Beer Night' Riot
Rebecca’s favourite episode of 2025 is “The 'Ten Cent Beer Night' Riot”. Twice the usual crowd turned up to see the Cleveland Indians take on the Texa...
Best Of 2025: Land Rover's Rugged Beginnings
Arion's favourite episode of 2025 was “Land Rover's Rugged Beginnings” A British motoring icon made its debut at the Amsterdam Motor Show on 30th Apri...
Best Of 2025: The 'New Coke' Debacle
Happy New Year, Retrospectors! We’ll return with new episodes from Monday 5th January, but in the meantime the team have been choosing their favourite...
Retrospectors Quiz of the Year 2025
How much have YOU learned from this year’s show? It’s time for our annual trivia test, as Arion and Rebecca face Olly’s fiendishly difficult questions...
When Cliff Ruled Christmas 🕊️🍷
Mistletoe and Wine became the UK’s Christmas Number One on 18th December, 1988; the first of three singles Cliff Richard would take to the top of the...
Meet The Simpsons
The debut episode of the world’s longest-running animated sitcom - 'Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire' - aired in the U.S. on 17th December, 1989; att...
The Krays in Soho
The Hideaway Club, now part of London’s Chinatown, opened on 16th December, 1964. Ronnie and Reggie Kray didn’t turn up for the big night, even though...
Where's Glenn Miller?
The world’s most famous bandleader, Glenn Miller, was last seen on December 15th, 1944 - after hitching a ride on a small plane to Paris. Desperate to...
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.
...
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...