Dan Snow's History Hit

On the 1st of December, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. After taking her seat in the section designated for people of colour, Rosa was asked to move for white passengers that wanted to sit down. She refused, and was arrested. This incident has become one of the most infamous examples of segregation in the U.S., and Mrs. Parks has gained an iconic status in the civil rights m...

We think of our natural environment as a subset of history, like studying the history of warfare or economics. But in truth, climate is the driving force of humanity, and understanding our climate helps us to understand life on earth in an entirely different way. Of all natural disasters, earthquakes are amongst the most impactful and the most destructive. The tragic Turkey–Syria earthquake on the...

This episode contains graphic references. Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty in Greek mythology. Her origin story is one of the more colourful ones, being born from the foam of Uranus’s castrated genitals. Her life is no less dramatic, and one where love and war are intimately connected. She is unhappily married to the son of Zeus and Hera, Hephaestus, yet carries on her affair with Ares,...

Spy balloons are really blowing up right now. The US has shot down one confirmed Chinese balloon and has engaged several other unidentified flying objects. But like so many things we cover on this podcast, it's an old method in a new outfit. Spy balloons for reconnaissance go back all the way to the French Revolution and pop up again in the American Civil War. To talk through the history of spying...

As a crew of over 500 boarded HMS Captain in the autumn of 1870, none of them knew their fate was sealed in the offices of the dockyard. The Captain was one of the Royal Navy’s first steam powered battleships- both innovative and formidable - three masts with wrought iron armour, but it was no match for the treacherous storm it came up against one September night in the Bay of Biscay. As the Capta...

This is the remarkable story of Nicholas Said - born into a wealthy Muslim family in the ancient Bornu Empire, his childhood was interrupted when, aged 13, he was sold into slavery. His journey would take him across Africa, Asia, Europe and North America, and bring him into contact with illustrious figures like Tsar Nicholas I and Queen Victoria. As a free man, he would join one of the first Afric...

Car bombings, assassinations and a military takeover: these are just some of the things American TV producer Natasha Lance Rogoff and her team faced when trying to bring The Muppets to the former USSR in the 1990s. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russia that emerged was a chaotic, sometimes violent free-for-all for western investors and oligarchs, swooping in to buy up businesses, natu...

For years we've understood that in the prehistoric hunter-gather world, the men did the hunting and the women did the gathering. Prehistoric man went on adventures, invented, created and drew, whereas prehistoric women stayed home, educated children and carried out domestic chores. Well, research now shows that this wasn't the case. Researchers are taking a closer look at our distant ancestors and...

Dan Snow’s History Hit hits the road to Belgium and the Waterloo Battlefield to see the soldier’s bones found in an attic earlier this month.  The Battle of Waterloo is often remembered for its great leaders; Napoleon, Wellington and Blücher. Or, for its sweeping strategic importance but what did the ordinary fighting men endure? We went to the Waterloo Battlefield to learn about the almost a...

Aethelfled, a warrior queen who crushed the Vikings, Jadwiga, the first Queen Regent of Poland and Hildegard of Bingen, an 11th-century polymath abbess who became a 20th-century feminist icon and saint. Art and cultural historian Dr Janina Ramirez joins Dan on today's episode to tell the stories of three incredible medieval women. They all ruled, influenced and changed history but are often left o...

Content Warning This episode contains adult themes and language that may not be suitable for children. On this special network crossover episode we're calling 'History Hit in the Sheets', host of our chart-storming 'Betwixt the Sheets' podcast Kate Lister joins Dan to unravel the stories, adventures and troubled legacy of Casanova. Sex - lots of sex. That's what we think of when we think of Giacom...

It's 1660 and General Edward Whalley and his son-in-law board a ship bound for the New World. They're on the run, wanted for the murder of King Charles I. His execution, the culmination of the English Civil War, sees control taken from the royalists by Oliver Cromwell and his parliamentarians for ten years. But, when the royalists return to power, an epic manhunt ensues for the fugitives hiding ou...

250 million years ago the armour-plated Placoderm fish invented the act of sex as we know it. Hubba Hubba. Dive into the historical sack as we go in search of the origins of nature’s greatest-ever invention. Dallas’s guest on this episode is Australian palaeontologist John Long, author of The Dawn of the Deed. Produced by Freddy Chick. The senior producer is Charlotte Long. If you'd like to learn...

Stalingrad is one of the most titanic and totemic battles of the Second World War. Millions were killed, the city itself was utterly shattered by fighting and the seemingly unbeatable Wehrmacht suffered a catastrophic rout like never before. But what made the Soviet victory possible; what happened to the men from both sides who fought in the rubble and snow of Stalin's city; and what were the cons...

Where can you find an Iron Age fort, Roman kilns, trees built for Nelson's navy and the hunting lodge of William the Conqueror? In the place that Dan calls home: the New Forest in the South of England. In this special episode of the podcast sponsored by BMW and National Park's Recharge in Nature project, Dan joins his good friend and local archaeologist Richard Reeves for an afternoon under t...

Fake moon landings, aliens and secret weapons; conspiracy theories about Area 51 abound but what exactly is it, and do we know anything about it with certainty? Dan is joined by Annie Jacobsen, investigative journalist and author of Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base , to find out what really goes on in this mysterious Air Force installation. They discuss dirty bo...

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam. It was one of the most costly conflicts that the U.S. has ever fought, causing immense loss of life on all sides. US intervention was defined by the strategy of 'pacification', but what exactly did this entail, and did it really work? Dan is joined by the expert on this subject, historian Robert Thompson, autho...

Anne Frank’s diary is one of the most famous accounts of the Jewish experience during the Second World War, giving us a deeply personal glimpse into the life-in-hiding of a prolific young writer. But on the 1st August 1944, the diary abruptly ends - the Franks, van Pelses and Fritz Pfeffer had been discovered by the Gestapo. In this episode, we’ll find out what happened to them between their arres...

The Three Musketeers  paints a picture of King Louis XIII of France as a rather weak monarch controlled by his powerful chief minister Cardinal Richelieu. Louis’ reign is generally thought of as being the beginning of the “age of absolutism” when ministers like Richelieu were in the ascendancy and the power of the court and courtiers declined. But was this really the case? In this episode of&...

We think of archaeology as an exclusionary profession, one reserved for experts in the field. But why isn't the discipline more accessible to the public? Should the past not belong to everybody, and are there some basic skills that anyone can learn to help rediscover our past? The archaeologist and television presenter Chloe Duckworth joins us to give advice on how to become archaeologists in our...

Waterloo was one of the bloodiest battles in European history, yet until now only two bodies have ever been found on the battlefield. The remains of 10 British and Prussian soldiers who died in battle have just been discovered by the Belgian-German team Waterloo Uncovered; some skeletons had been resting in an attic for more than 40 years. The bones bare the brutality of the battle with marks from...

1492 marked the beginning of the Colombian Exchange - the transfer of people, goods, ideas and commodities across the Atlantic between Europe and the Americas. We hear a lot about the conquistadors, the settlers, Jesuit priests and colonisers from Spain, Portugal and Britain whose success in the 'New World' was built on the help and enslavement of indigenous people. But what of the indigenous peop...

The brutal nature of the First World War presented frontline medical personnel with an array of horrific and debilitating wounds, inflicted on a previously unimaginable scale. From gas attacks and bayonet wounds to rifle fire and artillery barrages, day-to-day life on the frontlines posed a serious risk to life and limb. The doctors and nurses responsible for medical care rose to the challenge, an...

The Ming Dynasty emerged in the second half of the 14th century, having achieved a hard-won victory over the declining Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. Admiral Zheng He, a Muslim of Mongol descent, was born into this turmoil in a far-flung, frontier province of the Ming empire. Yet by the early 15th century, he had been made the commander-in-chief of some of the most extravagant and far-reaching naval voy...

As the British and French colonies in North America expanded in the middle of the 18th century, they inevitably clashed. Fighting between the two sides and their respective Native American allies began in Ohio Country (now western Pennsylvania) in 1754. Dan Snow tells Don how the fighting began in 1754 in Ohio country (now western Pennsylvania) and spread, over almost a decade, across the disputed...