Dave Does History

Today we tell the story of Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens—a name you won’t find carved on the National Mall, but one that should be there all the same. Laurens was born rich in Charleston, fought poor with Washington, and dreamed big enough to try freeing the enslaved in the middle of a slaveholding revolution. He was fearless to the point of foolishness, brilliant to the point of isolation, and...

The life and legacy of Theodore Roosevelt

Today, we head to the cold, churning waters off Korea in October 1597, where one man and thirteen battered ships faced the impossible. Admiral Yi Sun-sin, disgraced, beaten, and nearly forgotten by his own government, stood against a Japanese invasion force more than twenty times his size. The Battle of Myeongnyang was not supposed to be a victory. It was supposed to be the end. Instead, it became...

Welcome to Dave Does History , where the past isn’t distant, it’s alive and muddy. Today we’re going back to October 25, 1415, Saint Crispin’s Day, to a field in northern France that would become one of the most improbable victories in military history. The Battle of Agincourt was more than a clash of swords and arrows. It was a collision of arrogance and endurance, of knights in shining armor sin...

Tonight, we turn to one of the darkest nights in Los Angeles history, October 24, 1871. On that night, a mob of hundreds stormed through Chinatown and lynched at least eighteen Chinese immigrants. The victims were doctors, shopkeepers, and laborers, dragged from their homes and executed in the streets. This was not a random act of violence. It was the result of years of rising hatred, fear, and re...

Today we turn back to 42 BCE, to the plains of Macedonia, where the fate of Rome was decided. The Battle of Philippi was not just another clash of legions. It was the final act in the long death of the Roman Republic. On one side stood Brutus and Cassius, men who believed they had saved freedom by killing a tyrant. On the other were Mark Antony and Octavian, men who believed they were avenging Cae...

On an October afternoon in 1777, six hundred cold, hungry Americans waited behind a half-finished wall of mud and timber. Across the field marched two thousand Hessians, drums beating, flags bright in the smoke. The British expected an easy victory. What they got instead was one of the bloodiest, fastest defeats of the war. For forty minutes at Fort Mercer—better known as the Battle of Red Bank—th...

In October 1921, President Warren G. Harding traveled deep into the American South to do something no president had ever dared. Standing before a segregated crowd in Birmingham, Alabama, he condemned lynching and declared that democracy was a lie if it excluded Black citizens. It was a moment of courage from a man not known for boldness. This week on Dave Does History, we look back at Harding’s re...

In 1774, the American colonies found themselves at a breaking point. Britain had punished Boston for its rebellion, and the rest of the colonies were told to fall in line or face the same fate. Instead, they chose unity. In Philadelphia, delegates gathered for the First Continental Congress and drafted a document that would quietly change everything. It wasn’t a declaration of war. It wasn’t even...

The dust of North Africa still whispers the story. It was October 19, 202 BCE, and two men faced each other across the plains of Zama. On one side, Hannibal Barca, the Carthaginian who had crossed the Alps with elephants and fury. On the other, Scipio Africanus, the Roman who had learned from every one of Hannibal’s lessons and turned them against him. The Battle of Zama ended seventeen years of b...

On October 18, 1775, the sky over Falmouth turned the color of iron and the Royal Navy lit a match. Lieutenant Henry Mowat’s squadron opened fire for nine hours on a coastal town that is now Portland, Maine. The lesson meant to be taught was fear. The lesson that landed was resolve. Today we tell the story of how a wooden harbor became a furnace, why the British thought terror would tame New Engla...

On October 17, 1777, the tide of the American Revolution turned on a muddy field beside the Hudson River. British General John Burgoyne, once the pride of London’s military circles, surrendered his sword to American General Horatio Gates in what became known as the Surrender at Saratoga. This was not just another battle. It was the moment when the world began to believe that the colonies might act...

On October 16, 1793 , the streets of Paris echoed with the wheels of a cart carrying a queen to her death. Marie Antoinette, once the glittering symbol of royal grandeur, now sat pale and silent, hands bound, a prisoner called the Widow Capet. Her fall from grace was a slow collapse, born of rumor, resentment, and revolution. The woman who once ruled the most elegant court in Europe became a scape...

On this episode we head down the flat road into Raft Swamp, where the pines close in and the ground swallows hoofprints. The date is October 15, 1781. The British are about to surrender at Yorktown, but here the fight still decides who controls the Cape Fear country. Loyalists gather on high ground and tear up a bridge, certain that cavalry will balk at water and mud. Major Joseph Graham ignores t...

In the dark, frigid waters of the Cabot Strait, just after midnight on October 14, 1942, the passenger ferry SS Caribou was making her familiar run from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland. Onboard were soldiers heading home, mothers with children, sailors on leave, and the crew who knew every wave of that crossing. Then, from beneath the black surface, the German submarine U-69 struck. One torpedo, one f...

October 13, 1903, marked a new chapter in American sport. On that cool autumn afternoon at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, the Boston Americans made history, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates three to nothing and claiming the very first World Series championship. Before a crowd of more than seven thousand cheering fans, Bill Dinneen pitched a masterpiece, scattering four hits and striking out seven,...

On the morning of October 12, 1915, in German-occupied Brussels, a British nurse named Edith Cavell faced a firing squad. Her crime was compassion. She had sheltered Allied soldiers and helped them escape to neutral Holland, believing that saving lives mattered more than obeying military law. The Germans called it treason. The world called it murder. Her calm courage, her final words of forgivenes...

It was the night the U.S. Navy took back the darkness. On October 11, 1942, off Cape Esperance near Guadalcanal, Rear Admiral Norman Scott led a small task force into waters already littered with wreckage from earlier defeats. His orders were clear: protect the convoy, challenge the Japanese, and prove that America could fight—and win—at night. What followed was chaos and courage in equal measure....

In the sixteenth century, when theology could start wars and conscience could get a man killed, Jacobus Arminius dared to question the idea that God’s will left no room for human choice. Born in the war-torn Dutch town of Oudewater on October 10, 1560, Arminius rose from tragedy to become one of Europe’s most provocative theologians. His belief that divine grace invites rather than coerces set him...

She was born free in a time when freedom was rare, and she spent her life proving what it truly meant. Mary Ann Shadd Cary was a teacher, journalist, lawyer, and activist who refused to accept the limits placed on her because of her race or her gender. From the Underground Railroad stops of her childhood home in Delaware to the classrooms of Canada West and the editorial desk of The Provincial Fre...

He was the kind of man who made danger look like routine. Eddie Rickenbacker grew up on the rough streets of Columbus, Ohio, fixing engines and outrunning bad luck. By the time America entered World War I, he was already famous as “Fast Eddie,” a race car driver who understood speed better than fear. When he climbed into a SPAD fighter with the 94th “Hat in the Ring” Squadron, he became the nation...

In this episode of Liberty! 250 , Dave Bowman joins Bill Mick to explore one of Jefferson’s fiercest grievances: the King’s repeated dissolution of colonial legislatures. From Massachusetts in 1768 to Virginia in 1774, governors slammed the doors on the people’s assemblies, only to find that free men would meet anyway in taverns, churches, and town halls. Dave reveals how this “manly firmness” bec...

George Westinghouse was a man who refused to settle for “good enough.” Born on October 6, 1846 , he became one of America’s greatest inventors and industrialists, a name forever linked with safety, innovation, and light itself. From the invention of the railroad air brake to the creation of the first natural gas distribution system, Westinghouse transformed how the world moved and powered itself....

It began with the sound of a drum in the rain. On October 5, 1789, thousands of women left the markets of Paris and marched toward Versailles, hungry, furious, and unafraid. They demanded bread, but what they carried was something far heavier: the voice of a nation on the edge of change. By the end of that march, the King and Queen would no longer rule from their gilded palace. They would be broug...

On October 4th, 1957, a polished silver sphere with four antennae rose into the night sky atop a Soviet rocket. Moments later, the world was listening to a sound that would echo through history: beep-beep, beep-beep. This was Sputnik , the first artificial satellite ever launched into orbit, and its success shocked the globe. To the Soviets, it was proof of scientific brilliance and a political co...