what you didn't know

This is the story of a man who saw the end of the world twice in three days—and lived to tell the story for ninety-three years. In August 1945, a young engineer was preparing to leave Hiroshima after a three-month business trip. He was walking toward the docks when he realized he had forgotten his travel permit. He turned back toward the city center. At that exact moment, the sky split open. In th...

This is the story of a man who was essentially a human lightning rod—a man the heavens simply could not leave alone. Most people have a 1-in-15,000 chance of being struck by lightning in their lifetime. For one man in Virginia, those odds weren’t just a statistic—they were a recurring appointment. In this episode of And That’s What You Didn’t Know , we follow the electrifying life of Roy Sullivan...

This is the story of the strangest battle of World War II—a moment when the rules of war were thrown out the window, and enemies became brothers-in-arms to defend a medieval fortress. In May 1945, Hitler was dead, and the war in Europe was only days from ending. But at Castle Itter , a 13th-century fortress perched high in the Austrian Alps, the fighting was just beginning. The castle was a high-p...

This is the story of a woman who saw a machine made of gears and steam and realized it could actually "weave" music, art, and the very future of human thought. In the mid-1800s, the world was obsessed with the industrial power of steam. But while men were building faster trains and bigger factories, one woman was looking at a massive, unfinished brass machine and seeing something no one...

This is the story that keeps the Wright Brothers’ estate up at night—a tale of a "Condor" in the night and a secret agreement that might be holding history hostage. Two years, four months, and three days. That is how much time allegedly separates a quiet field in Fairfield, Connecticut, from the famous dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In this episode of And That’s What You Didn’t Kno...

This is the story of a woman whose face was known by millions as the "most beautiful in the world," but whose mind was so far ahead of its time that her most brilliant invention was dismissed as a toy. In the 1940s, she was the crown jewel of MGM, starring alongside legends like Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart. But while the cameras were off, she wasn't at the legendary Hollywood parties. She was si...

This is the story of a man who spent forty years learning how to fly, only to be defined by the 208 seconds where he didn't. On a freezing January afternoon in 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 took off from LaGuardia Airport. Less than two minutes later, at an altitude of 2,800 feet, the world went quiet. A massive flock of Canada geese had struck both engines, turning a state-of-the-art jetliner...

This is the story of a man who held the keys to both life and death—a scientist who is responsible for the existence of half the people on Earth today, and the horrific end of millions of others. In 1909, a German chemist achieved the impossible: he pulled bread out of thin air. For centuries, humanity had been sprinting toward a global famine, running out of natural fertilizer to feed a booming p...

This is the story of a boy from a rainy logging town who hated the spotlight, yet ended up becoming the sun that an entire generation revolved around. In the early 1990s, the music world was dominated by hairspray, spandex, and over-the-top stadium anthems. But in a small, damp garage in Aberdeen, Washington, a young man with a thrift-store cardigan and a left-handed Fender Mustang was about to te...

The Man with the Golden Arm In 1951, a fourteen-year-old boy in Australia underwent a major chest surgery that required thirteen units of blood to save his life. As he recovered, he made a vow: as soon as he turned eighteen, he would become a donor to pay back the debt he owed to the strangers who saved him. In this episode of And That’s What You Didn’t Know , we follow the life of James Harrison...

The Limping Lady of Lyon She wanted to be a diplomat, but a tragic hunting accident cost her a leg and, according to the State Department at the time, her career. They told her a woman with a disability had no place in the foreign service. They were wrong. She didn't just join the service; she became its most elusive shadow. In this episode of And That’s What You Didn’t Know , we follow the br...

The Man Who Boxed the World In 1937, a young truck driver sat at a pier in New Jersey, fuming. He had been sitting there all day, watching men manually haul heavy crates and cotton bales from his truck into the belly of a ship. It was slow, it was back-breaking, and to him, it was a colossal waste of time. He thought to himself: "Why not just lift the whole trailer and put it on the ship?&quo...

The Scholar in the Shadow In the late 1800s, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary faced an impossible task: cataloging every word in the English language and finding its first recorded use. They sent out a desperate plea for volunteers. One response stood out. From a place called Broadmoor, a man began sending in thousands of meticulously researched slips of paper, providing the perfect or...

The Secret of the Steel Needle In the late 1920s, two men were standing on opposite ends of Manhattan, staring at each other through telescopes. They weren't looking at stars; they were looking at the skeletons of each other's buildings. In this episode of And That’s What You Didn’t Know , we go behind the scaffolding of the most iconic race in architectural history. William Van Alen and H...

The Thief Who Caught Himself He was a brawler, a deserter, and a master of disguise who escaped from the most "escape-proof" prisons in Europe. By his early thirties, he was one of the most wanted men in France, living in the shadows of Napoleon’s empire. But then, he did something no one saw coming: he walked into a police station and offered a deal. In this episode of And That’s What Y...

This is the story of the most important five minutes in human history—and the man who decided to do absolutely nothing. At midnight on September 26, 1983, the world as we know it nearly ended. Inside a secret Soviet bunker known as Serpukhov-15, the early-warning sirens began to scream. The computer screens flashed a single word in blood-red: LAUNCH . In this episode of And That’s What You Didn’t...

This is the story of a man who was only four feet tall, lived with a hump on his back, and was nearly deported from America for being "unfit." Yet, he became the only man in the world who could talk to lightning—and the only one who could fix the machines that built the modern age. In the early 1900s, the Ford Motor Company was at a standstill. A massive, complex generator had broken dow...

A nineteen-year-old boy stands in a dim room in occupied Paris. His hands are stained with chemicals, and his eyes are heavy with sleep. He isn't holding a rifle or a grenade. He is holding a fountain pen and a bottle of bleach. In this premiere episode of And That’s What You Didn’t Know , we uncover the incredible life of Adolfo Kaminsky . He was a dry cleaner’s apprentice who discovered a se...

For eleven years, a woman in a horse-drawn carriage was a constant sight on the construction site of what was then the largest suspension bridge in the world. The workers called her the messenger. The politicians called her the assistant. But history calls her the savior of the Brooklyn Bridge . In this episode of And That’s What You Didn’t Know , we look into the life of Emily Warren Roebling . W...

He was a world-class long-distance runner—a man who could have competed for Olympic gold. But in 1939, he wasn’t running for a medal. He was running a race against a clock that was ticking in Berlin. In this episode of And That’s What You Didn’t Know, we look at the quiet genius who stayed in the shadows while the world was at war. While soldiers fought on the front lines, he fought with mathemati...

History is a puzzle with missing pieces. We found them. You know the names on the monuments. You’ve read the chapters in the history books. But those stories usually end right when they’re getting interesting. Behind every famous face, every world-changing invention, and every "accidental" victory, there is a secret that changed everything. In And That’s What You Didn’t Know , we go beyo...