Today In History with The Retrospectors

Sir Francis Younghusband’s band of British troops reached Lhasa on 3rd August, 1904. Along the way, they’d massacred thousands of bewildered Tibetans - but justified their incursion with the (false) claim that Russia had been manipulating Tibet to gain ground in British India. Despite the disastrous violence wrought by his men, Younghusband was considered by many back home as an explorer and adven...

Olivier Clisson III was beheaded for treason on 2nd August, 1343 - an event which triggered his wife Jeanne to violently avenge his death for years: a brutal killing spree that earned her the nickname ‘The Lioness of Brittany’. Despite being a fortysomething mother of two, she fitted out three warships with black paint and red sails, and targeted defenseless French merchant ships with her fearsome...

Chubby Checker's "The Twist", the most popular single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, was released on 1st August, 1960. It was just a cover version of a B-side which had already been released by its writer, Hank Ballard - but after it appeared on The Dick Clark Show, the world slowly became obsessed with the catchy tune and simple lyrics, and the suggestive dance that inspired it. In this...

Viking King Olaf II Haraldsson was killed on 29th July, 1030, kicking off a campaign, led by an English clergyman, to declare him a Saint. The cult of Olaf continues in Norway still, with festivals, pilgrimages and prayers given in his honour - even though Olaf used extreme violence and suppression to force parts of the country to convert to Christianity. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly r...

#throwbackthursday William James Herschel, a British colonial magistrate in India, first used fingerprints as a means of identification on 28th July, 1858 - not to catch a criminal, but to implement two-step verification on a contract. In Britain, the technology was first used to solve the theft of some billiard balls in 1902. These days, it’s been largely usurped by DNA, but remains a staple of t...

Famous for steaks, maroon banquettes, schooners of sherry and sexist advertising, family restaurant chain and ‘70s date night favourite Berni Inn first opened its doors at the historic Bristol pub The Rummer on 27th July, 1956.  Founded by Frank and Aldo Berni, the American-inspired concept had a staggeringly simple menu, so that customers wouldn’t be intimidated and, more importantly, so that the...

Charles E. Boles, otherwise known as ‘Black Bart’, was one of the Wild West’s most unlikely stagecoach robbers; being as he was a spiffy and quietly-spoken former teacher from Norfolk. But on 26th July, 1875 he made his name by robbing his first coach - without a gun. He targeted only Wells Fargo coaches, and never killed a passenger. As his crime career progressed, he made a habit of leaving behi...

Chairman Mao Zedong swam in the Yangtze River on 25th July, 1966. Despite being in his Seventies, the leader was said by party propagandists (and hence every newspaper in China) to have set a world-record pace of nearly 15 km in 65 min.  This piece of political theatre showed the world that the public face of the Chinese Communist party was in robust physical shape (despite reports in the West to...

William ‘Braveheart’ Wallace was defeated by fearsome English archers at the Battle of Falkirk on 22nd July, 1298; when Edward I’s army first used longbows against their Scottish adversaries, with devastating effect. Despite Wallace’s men deploying their famous ‘schiltron’ formation - whereby foot soldiers packed together to form a bristly spear-wall - the arrows the English volleyed back rained d...

German pop duo Milli Vanilli sold 33 million singles, including three US number ones, but harboured a shameful secret: their vocals were sung by someone else. At a promotional gig in Connecticut on 21st July, 1989, their backing track crashed - and speculation began to mount. “I knew right then and there, it was the beginning of the end for Milli Vanilli,” ‘singer’ Rob Pilatus admitted to the Los...

Shun Fujimoto scored 9.5 on the pommel horse and 9.7 on the rings at the Montreal Olympics on 20th August, 1976 - despite having a badly damaged kneecap, having landed catastrophically during a tumbling run. That should, by rights, have ended his and his team's medal hopes - but he decided not to tell his coach or fellow competitors about the injury, and carried on with his routines. As a result o...

The Paris Metro, engineered by Fulgence Bienvenüe and inaugurated on 19th July, 1900, was far from a world first: London, Budapest and Vienna had all beaten France in the race to create the next generation of subterranean trains.  However, this didn’t stop Parisian anxiety about their new subway. Would the electric lines kill innocent travellers? Would being so close to sewers expose commuters to...

Before the Ballot Act of 18th July, 1872, the British electorate were expected to declare their preferred candidate publicly at hustings, often under pressure from their employers and landlords, and plied with alcohol supplied by the politicians standing for election, in a process known as ‘soaking’. Over the years, alternatives had been put forward - including Jeremy Bentham’s concept of 1818, wh...

Happy Saturday to you. We have another brilliant show to share with you for some relaxed, longer, weekend listening.   It’s another history podcast - it’s called We Didn’t Start The Fire, it’s high concept which we LOVE. And yes it’s based on the Billy Joel song.   Billy is the guide through the most original, fascinating and random way to explore the history of the post-war world. Just like us, t...

Billy Carter, the beer-guzzling brother of President Jimmy Carter, became a serious headache for the White House when he was required to register as a foreign agent on 15th July, 1980, due to his dealings in Libya. Taking two large ‘loans’ from Gadaffi’s regime, viewed by the USA as a terrorist state, was perhaps Billy’s most controversial moment while his brother was in office - but not necessari...

#throwbackthursday Dr Benjamin Spock’s ‘Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care’ was first published on 14th July, 1946. It was then translated into 40 languages, selling over 50 million copies - second only to the Bible in the USA. Spock’s thesis is perhaps best summarised in its seminal opening sentence: ‘Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do’. This intuitive approach was a shock...

The massive blackout across New York City that began at 9:30pm on 13th July, 1977 lasted for a little over a day. Yet, during that time, arsonists set over 1,000 fires and looters ransacked 1,600 stores. It was the climax of a dark chapter for NYC, which at this time had an enormous financial deficit, was regarded as sleazy and dangerous, and had laid off hundreds of public service workers. But it...

Mormons were told to embrace polygamy on 12th July, 1843 - when the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, Joseph Smith, said a revelation had told him he must marry multiple women to continue serving God. It was a controversial change to the faith, meeting resistance not only from Smith’s first wife, but from other patriarchs in the Church. Nevertheless, Smith went on to have at least 40 wives...

China’s greatest naval explorer, Zheng He, set sail on the first of seven epic voyages on 11th July, 1405. He led a fleet of 255 ships, with an estimated 28,000 people on board. A eunuch, and a Muslim, he had risen through the ranks to become a right-hand man of the Emperor, and his prowess at sea vastly bettered the likes of his European contemporaries Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo.  In thi...

Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned off the coast of Tuscany on 8th July, 1822. His wife, Mary Shelley, waited an agonizing ten days to discover news of the dramatic shipwreck. Announcing the news of the atheist’s death, conservative London newspaper The Courier reported, “Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry, has been drowned. Now he knows whether or not there is a God.”  In this epi...

When Plácido Domingo, José Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti teamed up for their first joint performance on 7th July, 1990 in Rome, it was intended as a one-off collaboration to celebrate the FIFA World Cup.  But the concert triggered instant worldwide fame for the trio, who became known as The Three Tenors, and their live recording became the biggest-selling classical album of all time. In this epis...

Rerun. Sliced bread had never been automated before Otto Rohwedder unveiled his “power-driven, multi-bladed bread slicer” at Chillicothe Baking Company on July 6, 1928 - after an astonishing SIXTEEN years of self-funded development.   The Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune ran a front-page story in response - warning that consumers might find sliced bread “startling,” but that “the typical housewife...

Amazon, created in the Seattle garage of Jeff Bezos, was incorporated on 5th July, 1994.  Before Bezos had settled on the site’s name as a way of conveying the size and scope of the e-commerce platform he intended to build, his working titles had included Cadabra, Relentless, Awake, Browse and Bookmall. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly explain why Washington was chosen as the launch locati...

Who invented the hamburger? It’s almost impossible to know, given that mincemeat has been consumed all around the world, and for centuries - but Oscar Bilby, of Tulsa, Oklahoma is a strong contender.  On 4th July, 1891, he grilled a beef patty, and - for the first time in documented history -  PUT IT IN A BUN. And a Fourth of July tradition was born. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly trace...

The British Empire gained a new colony on 1st July, 1946 - the kingdom of Sarawak. For over 100 years, it had been ruled as the personal fiefdom of a Devonshire family: the ‘White Rajahs’. ‘Adventurer’ James Brooke had taken the territory in 1838, and then established a male, hierarchical, absolute monarchy in the country. His (increasingly eccentric) descendants enlarged the size of the country,...