Dave Does History

The Juan Fernández Islands first caught my attention thanks to a documentary so wildly inaccurate that it should have come with a warning label. The history was nonsense, the claims were absurd, yet the imagery was stunning. Those rugged cliffs rising from the Pacific, the wind carved ridges, and the lonely bays felt like a place where the world still keeps its secrets. It was the kind of landscap...

Josiah Bartlett does not always get the fanfare of the larger revolutionary names, yet his fingerprints are all over the birth of the nation. He was a frontier doctor who challenged the medical habits of his day and saved lives by trusting observation over superstition. He was a legislator who refused to bow to royal pressure. When the moment of truth came in July of 1776, he was the first delegat...

The story of the American Revolution usually unfolds with images of muskets, marches, and men debating the future of a continent. Yet the fight for liberty also lived in quieter rooms where spinning wheels hummed and tea went untouched. The Daughters of Liberty stepped into that space and turned ordinary domestic life into a political force that Parliament never saw coming. Their work pulled women...

In the quiet backcountry of South Carolina, a small trading village called Ninety Six became the unlikely center of a civil war within the American Revolution. It was a crossroads of trails and tempers, where Loyalists and Patriots clashed not just over independence, but over who truly represented justice and order. In this episode, we look at the two sieges that defined Ninety Six: the first in 1...

Welcome to another captivating episode of Dave Does History, recorded live on Bill Mick LIVE on November 18, 2025. After a five-week recovery from shoulder surgery, historian Dave Bowman makes a triumphant return to explore a profound and often overlooked influence on America's founding: Virgil's ancient epic, The Aeneid. Far from mere mythology to the Founding Fathers, this Roman masterpi...

In the closing years of the nineteenth century, when Chicago was bursting with industry and ambition, a man named H. H. Holmes built something far darker than a business empire. Behind his polite smile and bowler hat was a mind that turned murder into method and fraud into daily practice. This episode of Dave Does History examines the life and crimes of Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as H. H...

In this episode of Dave Does History , we ride back to the early 1820s, when the American frontier was not yet a land of settlers but of merchants chasing profit across a sea of grass. The story begins with William Becknell, a man drowning in debt who set out from Missouri and ended up opening the Santa Fe Trail. His daring 1822 expedition proved that wagons could cross the Great Plains, carrying...

In the frozen silence of the Barents Sea, two submarines from rival nations crossed paths on November 15, 1969. One was the USS Gato, a sleek American attack sub built for stealth. The other was the Soviet K-19, a ballistic missile boat already haunted by disaster and known among sailors as “the Widowmaker.” When their steel hulls collided 200 feet below the surface, the world nearly brushed nucle...

On November 14, 1969, the crew of Apollo 12 rode a pillar of fire into a gray and rain-soaked Florida sky. Just thirty-six seconds after liftoff, lightning struck the massive Saturn V, knocking out power, blinding the instruments, and filling the command module with flashing warning lights. A second strike followed, threatening to end the mission before it had even cleared the clouds. Inside the c...

John Dickinson was called the Penman of the Revolution, but his story is more complicated than that. He was a patriot who resisted British authority with his pen long before most dared, yet when independence came to a vote, he stood against declaring it too soon. His caution earned him scorn from some and respect from others. He believed in liberty, but he also believed that liberty without order...

On November 12, 1928, the SS Vestris slipped beneath the gray Atlantic roughly two hundred miles off the Virginia Capes. She had sailed from New York two days earlier, overloaded and poorly maintained, bound for Buenos Aires on what should have been a routine voyage. Instead, she became a floating indictment of negligence and pride. The captain delayed his distress call, the crew mishandled lifebo...

On November 11, 1919, the small town of Centralia, Washington gathered to honor the first anniversary of the end of the Great War. What began as a peaceful Armistice Day parade ended in gunfire, chaos, and death. As members of the American Legion marched proudly in uniform, celebrating service and sacrifice, they were ambushed by members of the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical labor grou...

On November 10, 1898, the city of Wilmington, North Carolina, was torn apart by the only successful coup d’état in American history. What began as a campaign of white supremacy ended in organized terror. Armed mobs burned The Daily Record , a Black-owned newspaper, and murdered scores of Black citizens while forcing the city’s elected officials to resign at gunpoint. By nightfall, Wilmington’s mul...

In the early hours of November 9, 1780, the quiet woods along the Broad River in South Carolina erupted in musket fire. The British, led by Major James Wemyss, had crept toward what they thought was a sleeping rebel camp. Instead, they charged straight into the muzzle flashes of men who had learned their lessons the hard way. This is the story of the Battle of Fishdam Ford, a small but fierce figh...

In 1960, America stood on the edge of a new decade, torn between the steady hand of experience and the promise of youthful change. The presidential race between Vice President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy was more than a contest for the White House. It was a battle for the nation’s direction in a tense and uncertain age. For the first time, the power of television would shape how vote...

On November 7, 1775, from the deck of a British warship anchored off Norfolk, Virginia, Lord Dunmore issued a proclamation that shook the colonies to their core. The royal governor declared martial law and promised freedom to any enslaved person who would take up arms for the King. It was a desperate act, meant to crush rebellion and strike fear into Virginia’s planters. Instead, it ignited outrag...

John Philip Sousa was more than a composer. He was the heartbeat of an emerging America, a man whose marches made a young nation stand taller. Born in Washington, D.C., in 1854, Sousa rose from a Marine Band apprentice to the most recognized bandleader in the world. His music carried the pride of parades, the dignity of ceremony, and the thrill of unity. Yet behind the polished brass and crisp sna...

In November 1940, in the cold and deadly North Atlantic, a converted passenger liner named HMS Jervis Bay faced an impossible task. She was the only escort for Convoy HX 84 when a German pocket battleship, the Admiral Scheer, appeared on the horizon. Her captain, Edward Fegen, ordered the merchant ships to scatter and turned his under-armed vessel straight toward the enemy. What followed was twent...

On November 4, 1921, the rhythm of modern Japan stopped cold at Tokyo Station. Prime Minister Hara Takashi, the first commoner ever to lead the nation, was on his way to Kyoto when a railway worker stepped from the crowd and plunged a knife into his chest. In an instant, Japan’s fragile experiment with democratic, party-based government came undone. Hara had been called both the father of constitu...

John Willis Menard’s story begins with hope and collides with history. In 1868, he became the first African American elected to the United States Congress, a victory that symbolized the promise of Reconstruction. Yet when he arrived in Washington to claim his seat, Congress refused to recognize him. Undeterred, Menard stood before the House and delivered a calm, reasoned defense of democracy itsel...

In this episode, we explore James K. Polk, the eleventh president of the United States and one of the most effective yet controversial leaders in American history. Known as the first "dark horse" candidate, Polk rose from relative obscurity to win the White House in 1844 on a bold platform of territorial expansion. During his single term from 1845 to 1849, he achieved every major goal he...

In this episode of Dave Does History , we uncover the dark, forgotten side of Sir Isaac Newton, the man who defined the laws of motion and gravity but also brought those same laws crashing down on London’s criminal underworld. When England’s economy teetered on collapse in the 1690s, the Crown turned to Newton, not as a scientist, but as a weapon. As Warden of the Royal Mint, he traded telescopes...

It was Halloween night, 1837. The Mississippi River was swollen and dark, a restless current running beneath a starless sky. Near Profit Island Bend, north of Baton Rouge, two steamboats met in the black water and changed history. One carried cargo. The other carried over seven hundred Creek men, women, and children forced from their homeland under government contract. When the Monmouth collided w...

John Adams was not a marble statue. He was a man of nerves, pride, and passion who helped build a new nation while wrestling with his own humanity. As the second president of the United States and one of the sharpest minds of the Revolution, Adams fought for independence, defended the rule of law, and gave the young Republic its conscience. In this episode of Dave Does History , we explore the lif...

For thousands of years, the cat has walked beside us, never behind us. It has been worshipped as a god, cursed as a demon, and loved as a companion. From the temples of ancient Egypt to the cobblestone streets of medieval Europe, and now to the quiet hum of our living rooms, cats have shaped human history in ways we are only beginning to understand. In this episode of Dave Does History , we explor...