Today In History with The Retrospectors

California had virtually no reputation as an international wine-growing region until 24th May, 1976 - when 11 wine experts gathered at a Parisian hotel and decided, in a blind taste-test, that wines from Napa Valley were indeed more quaffable than France’s most famous varieties: a decision that shook up the world of wine, and became known as ‘The Judgement of Paris’. Upon realising how controversi...

Throwing people out of windows might seem a peculiar way to protest, but it’s happened so often in history, it’s got a special name: defenestration. And perhaps the most significant of all - because it brought about the Thirty Years War - was the assault on three Habsburg officials by Bohemian malcontents in Prague on 23rd May, 1618. The dispute had kicked off when Ferdinand II refused permission...

Motorcycling daredevil Evel Knievel had been keen on jumping the Grand Canyon since 1968, but never staged an actual attempt. On May 20th, 1999, however, his son Robbie performed the feat on live television - and lived to tell the tale. “I’m wiped out in the head a little”, he said, before being examined by paramedics, who applied a neck brace and flew him to the nearest hospital.  In this episode...

Over 100 million Rubik’s Cubes were sold in just a few short years at the onset of the 1980s - a phenomenon kickstarted on 19th May, 1974, when Hungarian Professor of Architecture Ernő Rubik supposedly created the prototype for his ‘Magic Cube’. It took him a month to solve himself - a feat which seems unimpressive in a world where the current record stands at under six seconds. In this episode, A...

Atheist, homosexual, heretic… the slurs levelled at popular playwright Christopher Marlowe came thick and fast after he was arrested on 18th May, 1593. Just twelve days later, he was murdered in a London tavern. His former roomate, Thomas Kyd, pointed the finger at Marlowe after being tortured following the discovery of a ‘treasonous’ pamphlet in his home. Perhaps for the first time in Marlowe’s c...

The Buttonwood Agreement, as it came to be known, effectively launched the New York Stock Exchange. Signed by 24 stockbrokers on 17th May, 1792, it promised two things - that they would trade exclusively and directly with each other, and that they wouldn’t undercut each other’s commission. But they had no permanent building, and only a tiny number of companies to trade. So, until 1817, traders met...

The future Queen of France was accompanied by 57 carriages, 117 footmen and 376 horses on her journey from Austria to Versailles - but remarkably took only three hours to do her hair and makeup when she tied the knot with Louis-Auguste on 16th May, 1770. Only 15 at the time, Louis was perceived - even by his closest friends and family - to be timid, unforthcoming and bookish. In a further bad omen...

When three young kids in Fatima, Portugal reported that the Virgin Mary had appeared to them on 13th May, 1917, the incident sparked hysteria across their rural, intensely Catholic community. The ‘three secrets’ supposedly revealed that day - and the much-attended ‘Miracle of the Sun’ event prophesied that Autumn - gave a long-lasting boost to Fatima’s visitor numbers. It still plays host to six m...

Ridley Scott’s ‘Gladiator’ opened in the UK on 12th May, 2000 - and was widely credited with resurrecting the ‘swords-and-sandals’ genre, sparking an interest in Roman history, and achieving that rare combination of critical praise and humongous box office success. But the epic production was problematic - not least because supporting star Ollie Reed died during filming, leading to SFX house The M...

IBM's Deep Blue conquered Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov on 11th May, 1997 - in a man v machine clash Newsweek brazenly baptised ‘The Brain’s Last Stand’. Despite the incredible achievement of having created a program able to calculate 200 billion positions in three minutes, the IBM engineers were advised by their PR team not to look too happy at the press conference afterwards, so as to...

Michelangelo was a sculptor, not a painter, when on 10th May, 1508, he embarked upon the biggest gig of his career: painting the roof of the Sistine chapel in the Vatican.  Outwardly reluctant, and doubtful he could complete the project, he nonetheless took the opportunity to suggest that rather than portraying the twelve apostles requested by the Pope, he should instead depict 300 different chara...

Fugitive Thomas Blood sneaked his way into the Tower of London’s jewel room on 9th May, 1671 - bludgeoning the 77 year-old Keeper of the Jewels, Talbot Edwards, in the process.  Disguised as a parson, the Irish adventurer had cat-fished Edwards in an audacious and complex heist that involved multiple pairs of white gloves, a fake nephew and stuffing an orb down his trousers. In this episode, Arion...

The lifts weren’t operational, so there weren’t any visitors, but the commemorative coins had already been minted - so it was 6th May, 1889 that went down in history as the official opening of the Eiffel Tower, at that time the world’s tallest man-made structure. Erected for the World’s Fair to commemorate 100 years since the French Revolution, it was designed to be dismantled after a few years -...

Chanel No 5, the legendary perfume still said to shift one bottle every thirty seconds, was first released in Paris on 5th May, 1921. Created by Ernest Beaux, its innovative mixture of jasmine, sandalwood, orange blossom and aldehydes gave it a freshness and fizz that turned heads - and its simple, masculine bottle bucked the trend for ornate designs crafted by renowned glass-houses. In this episo...

As British literacy rates surged to a new high of 97%, the time was right to launch a simpler, shorter, more readable newspaper - and Alfred Harmsworth’s Daily Mail caught the zeitgeist when it hit the news-stands (at the eye-catching price of just half a penny) on 4th May, 1896. The new paper attracted half a million daily readers by the end of the century, drawn in by its American-inspired mix o...

Martin Shkreli, ‘the most hated man in America’, purchased the one extant copy of the Wu-Tang Clan’s concept album ‘Once Upon A Time In Shaolin’ for $2 million on 3rd May, 2015.  In seeking to sell their record in an auction, the hip-hop collective had been inspired by the concept of wealthy patrons funding Renaissance artists - but hadn’t counted on the winning bidder being the ‘pharma bro’ notor...

Where are meatballs from, and why does it matter? Social media users frenziedly grappled with these very questions on 29th April, 2018, when Sweden’s official Twitter account proclaimed: “Swedish meatballs are actually based on a recipe King Charles XII brought home from Turkey in the early 18th century. Let's stick to the facts!” Does this tale about the Royal family bringing meatballs back from...

Dennis Tito, a 60 year-old investment manager from California, blasted into orbit onboard a Russian Soyuz rocket on 28th April, 2001 - becoming the first ever private citizen to visit the International Space Station. He had self-funded the trip, to the tune of $20 million - much to the displeasure of his former employers, NASA, who initially refused to provide him with any training. In this episod...

King Henri III of France had a favourite group of young courtiers - his ‘mignons’ (or ‘cuties’, ‘sweeties’, or ‘‘darlings’) - known for dressing in an effeminate and eye-catching style. On 27th April, 1578, they  engaged in a bloody duel with a rival gang in a battle that came to be known as ‘The Duel of the Mignons’. Was it a ‘beautiful’ battle, a classical allusion to Roman combat, as some scrib...

John Wilkes Booth was on the run for twelve days before being tracked down to a tobacco barn at Garrett’s Farm in Port Royal, Virginia, and shot in the neck. He died of his injuries on 26th April, 1865 - after several agonising hours bleeding out.  Despite numerous witnesses to his death, it continued to be disputed by conspiracists for decades afterwards - one of whom took a mummified corpse he b...

Freda Payne’s banger ‘Band Of Gold’ sounds like a Motown record, but actually isn’t. Although written by Berry Gordy’s hit-making trio Holland-Dozier-Holland, it was released on their breakaway label, Invictus, on 25th April, 1970. Ever since, fans have speculated as to the meaning of its lyrics and the nature of the crumbled relationship within. “That night on our honeymoon / We stayed in separat...

Riding a Penny Farthing bicycle from the Sierra Nevada mountains to Yokohama, Japan, Thomas Stevens began his epic two-and-a-half year journey around the world on 22nd April, 1884. Along the way, he encountered mountain lions, Persian aristocracy, and thousands of supporters from bicycle clubs, who turned up to hear him speak. His journey was endlessly delayed by having to demonstrate the virtues...

The ‘Surgeon’s Photograph’, as it came to be known - a supposed glimpse of Nessie papped from the lochside - was debated by Loch Ness Monster aficionados for decades after being published in a sensational front-page splash by the Daily Mail on 21st April, 1934. Taken by London gynaecologist Dr Robert Kenneth Wilson, the photo was given particular credence because it had been submitted by a member...

No European had returned alive from Timbuktu until French adventurer René Caillie, who arrived in the ‘City of Gold’ on 20th April, 1828 after an arduous year-long journey. He was fêted by the Société de Géographie in Paris, who awarded him 10,000 francs in recognition of his daring voyage - and his place in the history books was assured. But Caillie was disappointed by what he had found. “The cit...

Child star Shirley Temple made her feature film debut aged six in ‘Stand Up And Cheer’, released at the height of the Depression, on 19th April, 1934 - and never looked back. In one year alone she would star in a further six films, and become a firm favourite of President Roosevelt. Fox Studios were soon employing a 19-strong team of writers just to crank out projects for the pint-sized star, and...