Dave Does History

The fall of 1777 brought the Revolution to a breaking point. In the dense forests and rolling fields of upstate New York, General John Burgoyne marched south with a British army that looked unstoppable on paper. But the wilderness, angry farmers with rifles, and a swelling Continental force turned his campaign into a slow bleed. At Freeman’s Farm, Daniel Morgan’s sharpshooters picked off British o...

On the morning of September 18 in the year 96, Emperor Domitian was already on edge. He feared omens, dreaded the noon hour, and trusted fewer and fewer people. What he didn’t know was that the real danger wasn’t in the stars. It was walking toward him in the form of a steward named Stephanus, his arm wrapped in bandages, hiding a dagger. Domitian sat to read a petition. Stephanus struck. The firs...

Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben was not born American, yet his influence helped secure American independence. A Prussian soldier trained under Frederick the Great, von Steuben arrived at Valley Forge in 1778 with nothing more than his experience, his determination, and a reputation that was perhaps a bit inflated by Benjamin Franklin’s pen. What he found was an army in rags, disorganized and nearly...

In this episode of Dave Does History , we turn to the third grievance of the Declaration of Independence, a charge that strikes at the very heart of liberty. Representation was not an abstract principle for the colonists. It was the difference between living as free men or being reduced to subjects of arbitrary power. From the seeds planted at Runnymede with Magna Carta to William Molyneux’s warni...

A Venetian teenager leaves home with two older relatives and a bag of letters from the Pope. Twenty four years later he comes back with a head full of Asia, a coat lined with jewels, and a story that will rewrite how Europe pictures the world. We follow Marco Polo from Venice to Xanadu, through deserts that crack underfoot and courts where a wrong word can end you. We will hear how paper money mov...

In the autumn of 1862, Robert E. Lee took the war north into Maryland, hoping to shake the Union and win foreign recognition for the Confederacy. What he did not count on was losing his battle plan, wrapped around a set of cigars, and having it fall into George McClellan’s hands. That stroke of luck set the stage for a clash in the mountain passes above the Maryland countryside. On September 14, t...

In September of 1759, two armies faced each other on a plateau outside Quebec City, on land that belonged to a farmer named Abraham Martin. History remembers it as the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. James Wolfe, the young British general already dying of illness, gambled everything on a nighttime landing and a climb up a cliff the French thought was impassable. By dawn, four thousand redcoats st...

In September 1857, the SS Central America set out from Havana on what should have been a routine run to New York. She carried more than five hundred souls and a fortune in California gold, the kind of voyage that symbolized American progress and prosperity. But the Atlantic had other plans. For three days a hurricane tore at the ship, stripping away her sails, drowning her boilers, and reducing he...

Today we are traveling deep into the forests of Germania, back to the year 9 CE, where Rome suffered one of its most shocking defeats. For decades the Roman Empire had marched across Europe, building roads, planting forts, and convincing itself that nothing could stand in its way. But arrogance has a way of blinding even the most powerful empires. At Teutoburg Forest, three entire Roman legions va...

On September 10, 1898, Europe lost one of its most mythologized figures in the most unexpected way. Empress Elisabeth of Austria, known to the world as Sisi, was walking along the lakeside in Geneva. She was sixty years old, dressed in black as she had been since the death of her son, and she was about to board a steamship for what should have been a quiet journey. Instead, an Italian anarchist na...

This morning on Bill Mick Live we heard Senator Tim Kaine declare that our rights come from government, not from God or from nature. That claim rattles me because it cuts against the very foundation of the American idea. History is not just about dates and battles. It is how we pass down the virtues we want our children to carry. When we stop teaching those lessons, societies begin to slip. The Ro...

On this episode of Dave Does History on Bill Mick Live we took a hard look at a statement from Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia that deserves more than a passing shrug. Kaine declared that our rights do not come from God or from nature, but from government. That claim cuts right into the heart of the American idea. Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence begins with the opposite truth, that we are cr...

Michelangelo’s David is one of those works of art that we think we know. We see him on postcards, posters, and T-shirts. He is reproduced so often that it is easy to forget what he really is. In Florence, standing seventeen feet tall, the marble figure looks less like a souvenir and more like a revelation. This was not a statue carved from perfect stone. It came from a massive block that other scu...

Special guests Lena and Graham from Patrol reports, sit in today to bring you the story of the Turtle... In September of 1776, New York Harbor was the stage for one of the most unusual moments in the American Revolution. The British fleet, anchored in force and confident of its dominance, faced a new kind of threat that no navy had ever encountered before. It came not from a ship bristling with ca...

On September 6, 1901, the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo was filled with excitement. Crowds gathered to see President William McKinley, a leader at the height of his popularity, who delighted in greeting ordinary Americans face to face. It was supposed to be a celebration of progress and prosperity, but history had other plans. Among those waiting in line was Leon Czolgo...

In September of 1622, the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha set sail from Havana carrying a fortune in silver, gold, emeralds, pearls, and goods that represented the wealth of an empire. She was the rear guard of the treasure fleet, armed with twenty bronze cannons and built to protect the convoy from attack. Her holds were so full that the registered cargo alone would be worth hundreds of...

On September 4, 1957, the front steps of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, became the stage for one of the most dramatic confrontations of the Civil Rights era. Nine African American teenagers, known now as the Little Rock Nine, tried to attend school like any other students. Instead, they found themselves blocked by the Arkansas National Guard and surrounded by an angry mob. Governor...

In 36 BCE, the Roman Republic’s fate wasn’t decided in the Senate or on a battlefield in Italy, but on the waves off Sicily. The Battle of Naulochus is a name most people have never heard, yet it was the clash that made Augustus possible. Rome was starving, her grain supply strangled by Sextus Pompeius, son of Pompey the Great, who ruled the seas like a pirate king. Into this crisis stepped Marcus...

On this week’s edition of Dave Does History on Bill Mick Live , we dig into the very first grievance Thomas Jefferson listed in the Declaration of Independence. It wasn’t about taxes, soldiers in your house, or even British warships off the coast. No, Jefferson opened with something that feels almost ordinary—laws. Specifically, the King’s refusal to give his assent to laws that the colonists beli...

On today’s episode of Dave Does History , we’re heading back to Massachusetts in the fall of 1774 for a story that almost rewrote the American Revolution’s opening chapter. It’s called the Powder Alarm, and it was the day when a rumor nearly set off a war months before Lexington and Concord. General Gage thought he was playing it safe by quietly seizing a stash of gunpowder from the colonists. Ins...

In the early hours of October 1, 1910, downtown Los Angeles was rocked by an explosion that tore through the Los Angeles Times building. The blast, fueled by dynamite hidden in a suitcase and ignited by barrels of ink and ruptured gas lines, turned the newsroom into an inferno. Twenty-one people were killed and more than a hundred injured. The city awoke not only to smoke and rubble, but to the op...

Today on Dave Does History , we tackle one of the most infamous names in all of Rome: Caligula. He’s the emperor remembered as a monster, a madman, and the poster child for how absolute power can twist a man beyond recognition. But the truth is more complicated. Born Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus, nicknamed “Little Boots” by soldiers, Caligula was adored when he first took the throne in AD 37. Fo...

When most people picture the Washington–Moscow Hotline, they imagine a bright red phone sitting on the president’s desk, waiting to ring with the fate of the world on the line. Hollywood planted that image in our minds, but the reality was far less dramatic and far more important. The Hotline was not a telephone at all. It was a teletype circuit that clattered out carefully worded messages, later...

In August of 1778, the brand-new alliance between the United States and France got its trial by fire on the shores of Rhode Island. The plan was bold: French warships and American troops would trap the British at Newport and score a symbolic victory for the Revolution. What they got instead was a hurricane that scattered fleets, tempers that boiled over between allies, and a bloody fight that ende...

In August of 1946, the war was supposed to be over. Yet in the skies over Yugoslavia, five Americans lost their lives when their unarmed C-47 transport was shot down by Yugoslav fighters. These were not combatants in a declared war. They were airmen flying a routine supply run from Vienna to Italy, caught in the crossfire of a new world order taking shape. The United States demanded answers, Yugos...