HISTORY This Week

SEASON TWO PREMIERE – January 8, 1964. In his State of the Union address, Lyndon Johnson unveils his War on Poverty, an effort to tackle subpar living conditions and create jobs across the United States. Johnson discovers that declaring war—even one on an idea—always comes with great costs. Why did LBJ pick poverty as one of his major initiatives? And what is the legacy of the war he started? This...

December 28, 2020. In this year-end recap, Sally sits down with  HISTORY This Week  producers McCamey Lynn, Julie Magruder and Ben Dickstein to discuss their favorite episodes from 2020 and bonus info that didn’t make it into the episodes. Plus, we’ll hear researcher Emma Frederick’s favorite facts from a year’s worth of deep dives. You can find the links to all relevant episodes below.   We’re ba...

December 27, 1853. On a freezing, snowy night in Birmingham, England, 2,000 people have lined up outside the town hall. They’ve braved the temperatures for a landmark performance, Charles Dickens’ first reading of  A Christmas Carol.  The tale will become an international sensation and beloved Christmas tradition. In this special episode of  HISTORY This Week , we bring you a classic 1949 renditio...

December 18, 1970. Decades after the end of WWII a Nazi doctor is on trial. Today is judgment day in a long, difficult legal battle, but this case isn’t about war crimes. The German pharmaceutical company Grunenthal is charged with the worst medical disaster in history: the Thalidomide scandal. The shoddily tested and hastily approved drug made its way into medicine cabinets around the world, and...

December 11, 1936. Just yesterday, King Edward VIII of England officially abdicated the throne. And tonight, some ten million people will hear the reason from the man himself. He tells the country in a radio address,  “I have found it impossible to carry a heavy burden of responsibility, and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do, without the help and support of the woman I love ”. ...

December 2, 1943. World War II is raging throughout Europe, but in the Allied port city of Bari, Italy, things have remained relatively quiet. The Allies are offloading tanks, guns and other equipment when on this night, the Nazis attack. They bomb the port, killing 2,000 soldiers and civilians, and sinking 28 Allied ships. One of those ships holds a secret cargo, a chemical weapon that leaks into...

November 24, 1966. Millions of spectators flood Broadway in New York City to watch the Macy’s Day Parade on Thanksgiving morning. The iconic floats – Superman, Popeye, Smokey the Bear – are set against a grey sky that can only be described as noxious. A smog of pollutants is trapped over New York City, and it will ultimately kill nearly 200 people. How did the 1966 Thanksgiving Smog help usher in...

November 16, 1532. Atahualpa, the king of the Inca Empire, marches towards the city of Cajamarca in modern-day Peru, surrounded by 80,000 soldiers. Once he arrives, Atahualpa expects the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro to surrender in the town square. But Pizarro has a plan of his own. With just 168 men, he will unleash a trap that destroys the Inca Empire, and brings thousands of years of...

November 10, 1969. It’s a Monday. Across the US, parents and babysitters and grandparents and aunts and uncles are turning on the TV, because there's a new show out today for kids: Sesame Street. The show has now been on the air for more than 50 years. It’s been viewed by 80 million Americans, and it’s aired in 120 countries. Some people call it the most influential show in the history of TV. How...

November 7, 1876. A little before midnight on election night, the Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes admits defeat and goes to bed. The Democrat Samuel J. Tilden has swept the electoral college, and by morning, he will almost certainly have the votes he needs to win the presidency. But overnight, the Republicans manage to change their fate and go on to steal the election. How did a one-legge...

It Was Said , a limited documentary podcast series, looks back on some of the most powerful, impactful and timeless speeches in American history. Written and narrated by Pulitzer Prize winning and best-selling author-historian Jon Meacham, and created, directed and produced by Peabody-nominated C13Originals Studios in association with The HISTORY® Channel, this series takes you through 10 speeches...

October 27, 1962. 72,000 feet above Cuba, an American U2 spy plane flies over the island, capturing photo intelligence. It’s been 13 days since the CIA discovered Soviet nuclear missiles stationed in Cuba, pointed directly at the US. Soviet defense forces on the ground catch the spy plane on their radar. They name it Target Number 33. The lower-level Soviet officers are getting nervous that this s...

October 19, 1814. An eager audience files into the Holliday Street Theater in Baltimore, about to see a debut performance, described as a “much-admired new song.” The composer of this song, Francis Scott Key, had written the lyrics during a recent battle in Baltimore, trapped on a British ship as he watched the rockets red glare from afar. Key wasn’t a professional songwriter – a prominent lawyer...

October 15, 2001. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle receives an innocuous-looking letter. It has childlike handwriting and an elementary school return address. When an intern opens the envelope, white powder spills all over her clothes and wafts into the air. Soon after, the confirmation comes: Anthrax. This attack is one in a series of letters that arrive at media offices all over the country, j...

October 8, 1939. In the Tibetan city of Lhasa, thousands of people have flooded into the streets to welcome the next Dalai Lama, a young boy of 4 years old. He doesn't know it yet, but he'll become the spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan people at the age of 15, right in the middle of a war. How does someone so young prepare for something so big? And what can the Dalai Lama's very unusua...

September 30, 1765. Almost a decade before the American Revolution, delegates from four colonies gather in the first, unofficial meeting of the Stamp Act Congress. The congress has been called to respond to a new British tax on the colonies, the Stamp Act. It’s essentially a tax on paper, and Congress’ response will be the first official act of dissension by the colonies against the British. Unoff...

September 24, 1955. President Eisenhower is asleep in his bed at his in-laws’ house in Denver. At around 2 AM in the morning, he’s jolted awake by chest pains. No one realizes it until the morning, but Eisenhower has had a heart attack. His cardiologist calms the public and tells them that their President will be alright – with some lifestyle changes partially inspired by new, cutting-edge researc...

September 16, 1965. Cesar Chavez and the National Farmworkers Association have been plotting a Mexican-American labor strike for years, concentrating their efforts in the farming community of Delano, California. But just one week earlier, Filipino farmworkers decided to strike on their own, disrupting these carefully organized plans. So Mexican-American farmworkers and their families gather at a l...

September 10, 2002. Thieves have broken into basements in two cities in Afghanistan to steal plastic containers. Those containers were holding seeds – extremely vital seeds. But the thieves didn’t want the seeds and so they dump them. With that, a critical natural resource, one of the most important on Earth, is lost forever. Today, we are in a race to save the world’s seeds. How has an internatio...

Words move humankind for good and for ill, and in the American experience, our most important public speeches have been both mirrors and makers of the nation's manners and morals at key moments in our common life. Written and narrated by Pulitzer-Prize winning author, Jon Meacham,  It Was Said tells the stories of those crucial words, taking listeners back to inflection points ranging from the McC...

Sept 5, 1698. Tsar Peter the Great of Russia returns home from a year-long European tour. When noblemen, religious figures and friends gather to welcome him home, Peter pulls out a straight razor, holds it to their throats and…forcibly shaves their beards. This event will go down in history as a first step toward Russian geopolitical power. Before Peter’s reign, Russia was an isolated nation that...

August 25, 1797. Alexander Hamilton, the former Secretary of the Treasury, has published a new pamphlet. At first, readers assume this is going to be another one of Hamilton’s pro-Federalist, ideological screeds. But soon, the whole country will realize that this is something very different: an admission of guilt. This wasn’t about a crime, but an affair – the first sex scandal in the history of A...

August 18, 1920. In the third row of the legislative chamber in Nashville, Tennessee, 24 year-old Harry Burn sits with a red rose pinned to his lapel. He's there to vote on the 19th Amendment, which will determine if women nationwide will be able to vote. Burn’s shocking, unexpected vote, “yes,” will turn the tides of history. But women had already been voting for decades before 1920, and many wom...

August 11, 1973. At 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, 18-year-old DJ Kool Herc plays his first New York City party. The dance floor is packed, the energy is wild, and Herc gives the performance of a lifetime featuring one very specific innovation on the turntables. Herc and the partygoers don’t know it yet, but this event will go down in history as the birth of one of the most popular musical gen...

August 4, 1987. The Federal Communication Commission’s leadership has come together in Washington D.C. to decide the fate of a vital issue: fairness. For the previous 40 years, the FCC has attempted to ensure that TV and radio broadcasters present both sides of the political issues discussed on their airwaves. But by the 1980s, the political landscape has changed, and the Fairness Doctrine will so...