Today In History with The Retrospectors

The Second Vatican Council - a conference of senior Catholics that transformed the way Mass is given in Churches around the world - began on 11th October, 1962.  The incentive of Pope John XXIII, who had been elected in his late seventies partly under the presumption that he would not do anything particularly radical, the Council split opinion between the Church’s traditionalists and modernists, s...

Scent-o-Vision, an in-cinema olfactory experience, was unveiled at the New York World’s Fair on 10th October, 1940. Accompanying a short film ‘My Dream’, its Swiss inventor, Hans Laube, pumped in aromas of rose water, peaches and burning incense for his wowed attendees to sniff. But it would be two decades before the technology was finally put into a feature film - Mike Todd, Jr’s ‘Scent of Myster...

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...

Rerun. Agatha Christie’s ‘The Mousetrap’, the world’s longest-running play, opened at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham on 6th October, 1952, with a cast including Richard Attenborough. The producer, Peter Saunders, predicted the production would run for 14 months.   More than 28,000 performances later, the show has become an iconic attraction in London’s West End, with a set that still includes the o...

American Apparel, the company founded by charismatic weirdo Dov Charney, first filed for bankruptcy protection on October 5th, 2015. It amounted to a fall from grace from just three years earlier when Charney had told ABC news that American apparel would live beyond his own lifetime. What he neglected to mention was that its ongoing life would be as an online only store, no longer making clothes i...

The first ever Orient Express set off from Paris on October 4th, 1883, immediately becoming a byword for extreme luxury. With its wood panelling, silk sheets and gourmet menus, the train quickly became a favourite of kings, aristocrats, artists and even spies. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly explore why the train neither went to the “Orient” nor was it particular “express”; discuss why a...

The Roy half of Siegfried and Roy was mauled on October 3rd, 2003, by a 380-pound white tiger live on stage in Las Vegas. Roy lived, but was partially paralysed, which spelled the end for the wildly successful double act, which had performed more than 30,000 shows for 50 million people and generated well over $1 billion in ticket sales over nearly half a century. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca an...

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...

Rerun. The corpse of John Paul I was discovered by a nun in the early hours of 29th September, 1978. His body was embalmed within 24 hours, heightening suspicions that the cause of death may have been unnatural. He had been Pope for just 33 days. An unconventional Pope – who had refused to wear the papal tiara, use the Royal ‘we’, or sit on a ceremonial throne – he seemed to have had a weird premo...

Gilbert Bourgeaud, better known by his nom de guerre “Bob Denard” was shot in the head at least twice, married seven times and had at least three religious conversions. And on September 28th, 1995, he launched his fourth and final attempt to take control of the Comoros islands with his own private army. In fact, since gaining its independence from France in 1975, the Comoros islands have experienc...

The trend for “Arkeology” was kickstarted on September 27th, 1829, when the German explorer Friedrich Parrot ascended to the top of Mount Ararat in Armenia, which was believed at the time to be the final resting place of Noah’s Ark. This was actually Parrot’s third attempt to climb to the top of Ararat. One of the previous two attempts had been scuppered because the climbing party had attempted to...

Jean Bernadotte’s dad, a local prosecutor in the southwestern French city of Pau, ​​intended for his son to follow in his footsteps as a lawyer. Instead, Jean became heir to the Swedish Crown on September 26th, 1810, and his descendants still sit on the Swedish throne to this day. Shortly after he moved to Sweden, the new crown prince was joined by his wife, Désirée, and their 11-year-old son, Osc...

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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, Rebecc...

Rerun. Witchcraft and infanticide were the charges levelled against young maidservant Judith Catchpole at the General Provincial Court in Patuxent County, Maryland on September 22nd, 1656. Since the case hinged on whether she had been pregnant, an all-female jury was assembled - the first in colonial America. Seven married women and four single women physically examined her - and found her not gui...

El Santo, masks, spandex suits... all were yet to be conceived when Salvador Lutteroth González launched Mexico's first ever national pro wrestling promotion, on 21st September 1933. ‘Lucha Libre’ - basically translated as ‘freestyle wrestling’ - has its roots in folklore, carnival sideshows and Greco-Roman traditions; but it was only after matches began to be televised in the 1950s that the event...

There was no red carpet, no Palme d’Or, and no Palais des Festivals - but Hollywood nonetheless descended on the French Riviera for the opening of the first Cannes Film Festival on 20th September, 1946.  It was actually the second time the event had been attempted - the first, in September 1939, was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly expla...

Powered by steam engines, and positioned on 60ft poles along the seafront, the Blackpool illuminations were first shown to adoring public on 19th September, 1879. 70,000 people came to see eight arc lamps, positioned 320 yards apart. Between them they provided illumination equal to 48,000 candles: an incredible spectacle considering it would still be another year before Thomas Edison patented the...

The ‘broadcasting ban’ on 11 Northern Irish organizations including Sinn Fein was finally lifted by Prime Minister John Major on 16th September, 1994, one fortnight after an IRA ceasefire had been achieved. The regulations, implemented six years earlier by Margaret Thatcher and her Home Secretary Douglas Hurd, prevented British TV networks from broadcasting interviews with Gerry Adams and Martin M...

Rerun. BMW unveiled its redesigned MINI for the first time, on 15th September, 1997; the eve of the Frankfurt Motor Show. Its predecessor had been in production for 41 years. Reborn as a ‘city’ car, rather than a micro compact, and with Union flags painted on its roof, this was the moment the iconic brand became seen as cheeky, sporty and British - but not, actually, especially small.  In this epi...

The USSR pulled ahead in the Space Race on 14th September, 1959 - when they became the first nation to successfully crash a man-made object into the Moon. Luna II was carrying a metal sphere bearing Soviet symbols, a replica of which was pettily presented to President Eisenhower by a jubilant Nikita Khrushchev. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly reveal how Nixon and Kennedy then went on to f...

Phineas Gage, a foreman on the New England railroads, was pierced through the head with a 13-pound tamping iron on 13th September, 1848. The rod went straight through his skull and landed several yards away. Despite this, Gage was able to present himself at a physician, and anticipated being back at work in a couple of days. In reality, his convalescence was long and difficult, and Dr John Martyn...

NBC premiered ‘Royal Flush’ - the pilot episode of iconic Sixties pop-comedy show The Monkees - on 12th September, 1966. And the Daydream Believers quickly found their way into America’s heart… The Beatles-a-like actors had never met or worked with each other ever before answering an ad seeking ‘four insane boys, aged 18-21’, placed by‘Five Easy Pieces’ producer Bob Rafelson. In this episode, Ario...

High-speed collisions between locomotives became mainstream entertainment on 9th September, 1896, when Joe Connolly - AKA “Head-On Joe” - staged the first of the 70 deliberate trainwrecks with which he entered the record books. The trend lasted until the 1930s and attracted tens of thousands of spectators to state fairs across the United States. The events were responsible for maiming and even kil...

Margaret Gorman, a schoolgirl from Washington DC, was crowned ‘Miss Intercity Beauty’ at the “Fall Frolic” in Atlantic City on 8th September, 1921 - an event that would eventually become known as Miss America, and watched by 75% of American households. She and her fellow competitors took part in an early incarnation of the swimsuit round (complete with woollen leggings), making their grand entranc...