Today In History with The Retrospectors

On October 13th, 1881, the linguist and grammarian Eliezer Ben-Yehuda held what is thought to have been the first modern conversation in Hebrew with two friends at a Paris café. The conversation would have had some serious stumbling blocks, given that the language was still missing numerous modern words including bicycle, towel, and – crucially for being in a cafe – a word for coffee. In this epis...

A grand, five-day bash to celebrate the wedding of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria and Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen, Munich’s first ‘Oktoberfest’ kicked off on October 12th, 1810, with an emphasis on horse races, folk costumes, and royal pageantry (rather than steins and sausages). Ludwig later admitted he’d chosen Therese for practical reasons, not passion - and proceeded to have plen...

King Alexander of Yugoslavia embarked on a state visit to France on 9th October, 1934 – and was shockingly shot dead by an assassin in the crowd, the aftermath of which was captured by newsreels. Yugoslavia was a fractured country; an uneasy alliance between multiple peoples governed from Belgrade, and despised by extremist groups who wanted Macedonian independence. The assassin, Bulgarian revolut...

The world's oldest oldest continuously surviving constitution, was adopted in the tiny country of San Marino on 8th October, 1600. This was a good 187 years before the United States adopted its own constitution and, during his presidency, Abraham Lincoln frequently held San Marino up as the model of a government founded on republican principles. Such ongoing praise eventually earnt the US presiden...

Léon Gambetta took to the skies above Paris in a hot air balloon on October 7th, 1870, soaring over the enemy German soldiers that surrounded the city on his way to raise new armies to swing the Franco-Prussian war back in France’s favour. Perhaps ill-advisedly, the charismatic statesman shouted “Vive la République!” as he went, thus attracting enemy fire which punctured his balloon, but the escap...

The world’s most famous cabaret, the Moulin Rouge, opened its doors in Paris on 6th October, 1889. Founded by Joseph Oller and Charles Zidler, the club was originally called the Jardin de Paris and featured everything from art galleries to operettas, live tableau and an opium den. In the era of the Belle Epoque, however, the venue became most associated with the scandalous can-can dance, which act...

Monty Python’s Flying Circus made its TV debut, in a Sunday night graveyard slot on BBC 1, on 5th October, 1969. Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones - plucked from ITV kids show Do Not Adjust Your Set - were matched by BBC producers with the acerbic John Cleese and Graham Chapman from At Last The 1948 Show, and, surprisingly, American animator Terry Gilliam. The result was an unprecedentedly...

Secretive Catholic sect Opus Dei was founded on 2nd October, 1928 by the young, energetic priest Jose Maria Escriva, who believed his divine mission was to inject religious fervour into everyday life, with holiness achieved not via clergy, but from the daily work of laypeople.  The faith grew rapidly in Spain, especially during the Franco era, eventually spreading internationally. But its tie...

Tobe Hooper’s legendary low-budget horror film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, first screened in Austin on 1st October, 1974. The movie was an international sensation - making £21.9 million from its £100,000 budget in its first year - although not in the UK, where it was not screened nationally for 25 years, due to the BBFC’s concerns about its portrayal of suffering and violence against women. In t...

The first ever episode of Thunderbirds, the revolutionary British TV show starring puppets, aired on September 30th, 1965. It was instantly a hit in Britain, and elsewhere in the world, but its failure to captivate a US audience led to its untimely demise after just two seasons. The show used a system, coined by its creators as “Supermarionation” which involved pre-recording the voices, which woul...

Henry Robinson opened the Office of Addresses and Encounters on Threadneedle Street, London on 29th September, 1650. The centre provided a forward-looking, unusual mix of services ranging from job placements, money lending, and property dealings… to (shhh) match-making. Robinson's inspiration came from a broader philosophical concept of creating a place where people of all classes could access inf...

The Liberty Loan Parade on 28th September, 1918 was the biggest party Philadelphia had ever seen: floats, marching bands, and miles of cheering crowds. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a deadly super-spreader event. The Spanish flu had first killed a Philadelphian just nine days earlier, and cases were already popping up in the Navy Yard. Doctors warned the city to cancel the parade, but officia...

Billy Graham’s Los Angeles Crusade started modestly on 25th September, 1949. But after newspaper giant William Randolph Hearst told his editors to "puff Graham", the nightly revival meetings exploded in popularity, becoming a ‘sin-smashing sensation’, and Graham soon became America’s favourite preacher. His style was perfect for the Hollywood backdrop. At just 30 years old, Graham had a youthful,...

The ‘Austenmania’ craze of the mid-90s kicked off with the BBC’s production of ‘Pride and Prejudice’, which first aired on 24th September, 1995. Now primarily remembered for Colin Firth’s ‘wet shirt’ scene, Andrew Davies’s ‘sexed up’ adaptation also starred Firth’s real-life squeeze Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet, and was the first serialisation of the novel to be filmed on location, with pictu...

Nintendo was world-famous by the 1980s but the origins of the company go back a century earlier - to September 23rd, 1889, when Fusajiro Yamauchi founded Nintendo Koppai, a maker of brightly-coloured ‘Hanafuda’ cards. The hand-painted playing cards, made of mulberry bark, were produced for decades and were a favourite of Yakuza gangsters for use in illegal gambling.  In this episode, Arion, R...

Robert Walpole, first Lord of the Treasury, moved into 10 Downing Street on 22nd September, 1735, after three years of renovations. Although initially given to him as a personal gift from the King, the house became the official residence for all future Prime Ministers. Despite its central location in London, Downing Street wasn't fashionable at the time, and the house already had a long history of...

Barrister Cecil Chubb attended a Salisbury auction on September 21st, 1915 intending to buy curtains or chairs, but impulsively bought… Stonehenge. Yes, that Stonehenge. Built by Neolithic and Bronze Age communities for purposes still debated today - ceremonial? religious? - for centuries the site had been treated less like a sacred monument and more like an inconvenient field ornament. Sheep graz...

The first Paralympic Games - hosting 400 athletes from 23 countries - took place in Rome on 18th September, 1960.  But it was only known by this name retrospectively: the day it took place, this festival of disabled sport was called The Ninth Annual International Stoke Mandeville Games. Sprung from a competition held at a hospital in Buckinghamshire, and pioneered by German-Jewish neurosurgeo...

Why were multiple ships and planes lost in the section of the Atlantic between Miami, Puerto Rico and Bermuda? Journalist Edward van Winkle-Jones first floated the idea of ‘the Bermuda Triangle’ - although he didn’t call it that - in an article for the Miami Herald on 17th September, 1950. The speculation that ensued inspired a lively industry in conspiracies, myths and tall tales that remains to...

The Wall Street bomb, outside JP Morgan’s headquarters, killed 38 people and seriously injured 143 more on 16th September, 1920. It was the biggest terror attack in New York City until 9/11. The blast shattered windows, overturned vehicles and sent fragments of metal and glass flying through nearby buildings. J.P. Morgan himself was safely on holiday in Scotland, but his son Junius Morgan was amon...

As a symbol over 7,000 years old, the swastika had a long, diverse history before becoming the official flag of Nazi Germany on 15th September, 1935. It had been considered a sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Odinism - and appeared on artifacts from pre-Christian European cultures.  It had even featured as part of U.S. Girl Scout iconography in the early 20th century. But when Adolf Hi...

Kellogg’s launched their space-age convenience food, Pop-Tarts, on 14th September, 1964. In a cheeky bit of corporate one-upmanship, the cereals company had beaten their arch-rivals, Post, to supermarket shelves: Post’s product “Country Squares” was actually announced first, but couldn’t gain ground on Kellogg’s copycat product. Culturally, Pop-Tarts arrived at just the right moment. Women were wo...

Captain Peter Warner and his crew made a startling discovery as they sailed past the uninhabited island of Atta in the Pacific on 11th September, 1966: six naked, shaggy-haired teenage boys, who had been stranded there for fifteen months. Sione, Stephen, Kolo, David, Luke, and Mano had escaped from their boarding school in Tonga's capital, Nuku'alofa, having "borrowed" a boat and embarked on a spo...

London cab driver George Smith became the first person ever arrested for drunk driving after slamming his cab into a building on 10th September, 1897. He was fined 20 shillings (around £130 in today's money) - but was not banned from the road. The vehicle he was driving only had a top speed of 12 mph, but, unfortunately for him, the building he crashed into was the home of celebrated actor Sir Hen...

‘Friends’ spin-off ‘Joey’ premiered on NBC on 9th September, 2004. 18.6 million Americans tuned in to watch Matt LeBlanc’s next chapter as Joey Tribbiani, now relocated to Los Angeles, alongside his sister Gina and her teenage son Michael. But the audience steadily melted away, and NBC shunted the second season around before putting the show on hiatus, before cancelling it.  In today’s episod...