Today In History with The Retrospectors

Tinky Winky, Dipsy, La La and Po were introduced to British viewers on 31st March, 1997 - launching an international phenomenon and changing kid’s television forever. ‘Teletubbies’ was an enormous hit for the BBC, but not without controversy: from viewers concerned that the characters’ toddlerish language might impede the linguistic development of the nation’s children, to angry Radio Times reader...

After a 23 year run that included introducing American audiences to The Beatles, Elvis Presley and The Rolling Stones, the last original episode of ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ aired on CBS on March 28, 1971. The variety programme, which cost $8 million per year, fell victim to ‘the rural purge’, via which several iconic shows that appealed mainly to poorer and older demographics were axed in favour of...

When Marlon Brando won Best Actor at the Academy Awards for his role in The Godfather on March 27, 1973, he sent Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather in his place. Dressed in traditional Apache garb, she declined the award on Brando’s behalf, “And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry." Littlefeather’s appearance was met with a mix of...

The Mille Miglia - a daring, 1,000-mile race across Italy - was first held on March 26th, 1927. Using ordinary dirt roads as the racetrack, competitors tore through cities, mountains, and countryside at unprecedented, breakneck speeds. Townspeople lined the streets, waving flags and throwing flowers, as glamorous Bugattis and Alfa Romeos roared past. The first winners, Nando Minoja and Giuseppe Mo...

Marc Brunel’s visionary under-water tunnel from Rotherhithe to Wapping finally opened to the public on 25th March, 1843. It had taken 18 years to build, and was massively over-budget, but was the first tunnel successfully created under a navigable river anywhere in the world. Its construction had cost lives, caused controversy and changed the way tunnels would be built forever. But it soon became...

Fugitive Ronnie Biggs - infamous for participating in the Great Train Robbery of 1963, then escaping from Wandsworth Prison - was rescued by Bajan police after being kidnapped in Brazil today in history on 24th March 1981. A media frenzy ensued as reporters awaited his arrival, thanks to a tip-off by the operation's leader, John Miller. But Biggs found himself released by Barbados authorities, spa...

Medieval power couple King Louis VII of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine, seemingly unable to produce a male heir, had a messy breakup. Their annulment on 21st March 1152 was granted by the Pope on the grounds of consanguinity - meaning they were too closely related by blood. And yet both parties went on to marry people to whom they were even more closely related. Henry of Anjou was Eleanor’s next...

The Jules Rimet, trophy of the FIFA World Cup, was stolen from a stamp exhibition in Westminster Central Hall on March 20th, 1966 - the year England was hosting (and went on to win) the tournament. The theft sparked a massive Police investigation and multiple offers of rewards for its recovery. Astonishingly, the trophy had not been heavily guarded or alarmed, so the thieves stole it with bolt cut...

Las Vegas was a struggling mining outpost until March 19th, 1931, when Nevada Governor Fred B. Balzar signed Assembly Bill 98, also known as the Wide Open Gambling Bill: legalising casino gambling, and setting the stage for town’s transformation into Sin City.  When the Boulder Dam project began, drawing thousands of workers nearby, Fremont Street exploded into a Saturday night hotspot. And when m...

The craze for paper dresses was the huge and unexpected impact of a viral marketing campaign for the Scott Paper Company that debuted in TIME magazine on 18th March, 1966.  For $1.25, readers could send off for a red bandana print or a black and white pop art dress made of cellulose. It was intended as a press stunt to promote durable napkins, but, to everybody’s surprise, half a million units wer...

Marie Stopes’ “Mother’s Clinic” opened its doors in Holloway, on March 17th, 1826. Stopes was a trailblazer, her birth control clinic providing working-class women with access to contraception and advice for the first time. However, her organisation's full name - "The Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress" - reveals her disturbing underlying belief in selective breeding for ra...

The Mikado opened on March 14, 1885 to immediate acclaim, and went on to become W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s most famous and best-loved operetta, despite its tortured genesis.  Due to growing creative tensions and their previous show flopping, Gilbert and Sullivan’s partnership was on the rocks, so The Mikado’s success took both completely by surprise.  In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and O...

Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod, better known to the world as Mata Hari, set the Paris stage ablaze on March 13, 1905, with a scandalous dance routine that turned her into an overnight success.  Sporting a gold jeweled breastplate and bracelets, Mata Hari’s performance was a striptease that left little to the imagination. But even the wildest imagination couldn’t envisage what lay ahead for the exot...

As the Dixie Chicks’ lead singer, Natalie Maines, made an off-the-cuff remark at a London concert on 12th March, 2003, she could not have known the comments would haunt her band (now known as ‘The Chicks’) for decades.  Just days before the US invasion of Iraq, and to cheers from the British crowd, she said from the stage: “We’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.” A Guardia...

Producer John Langley had been pitching a no-frills, fly-on-the-wall documentary series following US Police Officers for six years when, in the midst of a writer’s strike, Fox finally bit. COPS made its debut on 11th March, 1989, becoming one of the longest-running shows in TV history. Langley called it ‘video vérité’; the New York Times called it ‘tabloid TV’. From the beginning, concerns about i...

The ‘Book of the Month Club’ was first launched, on March 10th, 1926. Its inaugural selection, ‘Lolly Willowes’ by feminist Bloomsbury author Sylvia Townsend Warner, underscores the transformative power that such clubs would go on to have (via celebrity endorsements such as Oprah and Richard & Judy): Warner leveraged her selection as a springboard for wider literary recognition in the United State...

Kidnapped from her prestigious Liverpool boarding school on March 7, 1827, 15-year-old Ellen Turner was led to believe her family would be financially ruined if she didn’t marry her 30 year-old abductor, Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Before she was able to deduce that his story was a sham, Turner was whisked off to Gretna Green and inadvertently passed over the keys to her father’s estate, Shrigley, to...

Birdseye Frosted Foods launched its first range of flash-frozen foods at a ‘test kitchen’ in Springfield, Massachusetts on 6th March, 1930 - and at the helm was Clarence ‘Bob’ Birdseye, an American entrepreneur of great ambition and insight. Like Captain Birdseye, the bearded, fictional mascot of the brand dreamt up for the British market, Bob had scoured the seven seas looking for innovative appr...

Barry Sadler’s "Ballad of the Green Berets" reached number one in the Billboard Hot 100 on 5th March, 1966 - the only pro-Vietnam War hit to ever top the charts. Before it even hit radio stations, Sadler had been performing the song at military bases and patriotic events, setting the stage for its massive success. RCA pushed it hard, knowing that in early ‘66, America’s support for the war was sti...

When Andrew Jackson was inaugurated on 4th March, 1829, large crowds of recently emancipated, enthusiastic voters turned up to the Capitol to watch the former Army commander become President. But the event soon spiraled out of control, descending into, at best, chaos; and, at worst, a brawl.  Eyewitness Margaret Bayard Smith wrote: “No arrangements had been made no police officers placed on duty a...

The Emancipation Statute was unveiled by Emperor Alexander II: March 3rd, 1861, liberating the serfs of Russia. The culmination of years of bureaucratic efforts and peasant uprisings, the legislation marked a decisive break from the past and aimed to align Russia with European norms - whilst The United States still relied anachronistically on slave labour. Until this day, the institution of serfdo...

Deciphering the structure of DNA was as complex as the double helix itself. On 28th February, 1953, Dr. James Watson and Dr. Francis Crick rushed to the pub and announced to their fellow drinkers in The Eagle, Cambridge that they had just found “the secret of life”.  But their work would not have been possible without the uncredited contribution of Dr. Rosalind Franklin - whose photographs of the...

The first Pokémon videogames, ‘Red’ and ‘Green’ were launched in Japan on 27th February, 1996. The franchise went on to be the most successful ever video game to TV adaptation, and the highest selling trading card game in history of cards.  Created by Satoshi Tajiri, the gameplay recalled his childhood obsession for bug-hunting, and made use of Nintendo’s new GameBoy connection cable to enable pla...

Bill Bowerman, co-founder of Nike, was on a quest for the perfect running shoe grip when he found inspiration in his wife’s waffle iron. Pouring polyurethane directly onto their wedding gift, he began to develop the prototype that would eventually become Nike’s legendary waffle sole trainer, and which received its patent on 26th February, 1974.  But Nike wasn’t always the fashion powerhouse we kno...

The Anderson Shelter, the pop-up sheds distributed to millions of Londoners during the Blitz was first erected on February 25th, 1939 - in the garden of Mrs. Spong, in Carlsbad Street, Islington. Devised to protect civilians from Nazi air raids, and handed out free to those who earned under £5 per week, the shelters were dug four metres into the ground and covered with earth, provided cramped but...