Today In History with The Retrospectors

Agatha Christie’s ‘The Mousetrap’, the world’s longest-running play, opened at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham on 6th October, 1952. Producer, Peter Saunders predicted the production would run for 14 months. Over 28,000 performances later, the show has become an iconic attraction in London’s West End - with a set that still includes the original mantelpiece clock present on stage on opening night ne...

The ‘Women’s March’ of 1789 began spontaneously, when a market trader banged a drum in a Parisian square on 5th October - launching a chain of events which would eventually end a century of Versailles rule and lead to the execution of Louis XVI. Initially a reaction to the grain shortage that had left Parisians hungry as the aristocracy indulged in luxuries, the protest soon morphed into an angry...

Hooters, the beach bar chain famous for its flirtatious waitresses, first flung open its doors in Clearwater, Florida on 4th October, 1983. Its publicity-friendly ‘Hooters Girls’ - and a chance visit by John Riggins, star fullback for the Washington Redskins - ensured the concept took off, spawning 425 outlets in 30 countries. However, more recently, Hooters was hit by rival ‘breastaurants’ Tilted...

A 12 x 8.5cm ‘Correspondenzkarte’, the earliest progenitor of the modern-day postcard, was created by the Austrian Post on 1st October, 1869. Cheaper and more practical than sending long-form letters, the new medium was an instant sensation with the public - with three million postcards being sent in the first three months. But cultural conservatives felt it would lead to poor grammar, a capitulat...

Literature’s most famous castaway, Robinson Crusoe, was washed up on a desert island - where he would remain for 28 years - on 30th September, 1659. By selecting this date, author Daniel Defoe ensured that his fictional protagonist’s fate pre-dated the real-life estrangement of Royal Navy man Alexander Selkirk, who was stranded some 46 years later: 14 years prior to Defoe writing his novel. In thi...

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 premonition...

Feet, inches, palms, cubits, rods… all were SWEPT ASIDE on 28th September, 1889, when the first General Conference of the Weights and Measures Commission met in Sèvres, France to refine a definition for the NEW universal measurement of distance: the metre. The calculation was painstakingly made by measuring a quarter of the meridian of the Earth - running from the North Pole to the Equator - and t...

Journalists, exhibitors and producers packed the Ambassador Hotel Theater, Los Angeles on 27th September, 1922 - to see the first ever paid-for screening of a 3-D film, ‘The Power Of Love’. Using an anaglyph system (meaning the 3-D glasses had two tinted lenses; one red, one green), viewers were told they could select a happy or sad ending - by closing one of their eyes. In this episode, Arion, Re...

Christine Jorgensen began gender reassignment surgery in Copenhagen on 24th September 1951. The New York Daily News later heralded the event with a headline splash - “Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty!” - thereby creating America's first transgender celebrity. Writing to friends, she said: “As you can see by the enclosed photos, taken just before the operation, I have changed a great deal. But it is the...

The BBC’s teletext information service, Ceefax, launched on 23rd September, 1974 - providing the British public with a way to look up headlines, football results and TV listings, some twenty years before the launch of Internet Explorer. Countless National Lottery winners discovered their victories via the analogue service, which was discontinued in 2012. To this day, devotees still share ancient s...

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 guilty of...

‘The Fish Feud!’ - as the tabloids originally termed the standoff between Britain and Iceland over fishing rights - had escalated into a fully-fledged ‘Cod War’ by 21st September, 1958, when the destroyer H.M.S. Diana requested medical assistance for a Marine suffering appendicitis. The dispute arose when Iceland had unilaterally extended its fishing zone from 4 to 12 nautical miles. For centuries...

Henry Winkler, an accomplished water-skier, had asked the producers of ‘Happy Days’ if he could showcase his skills on the sitcom. On 20th September, 1977 his wish came true - in a shark-jumping sequence so absurd it would forever be linked with the irreversible artistic decline of long-running TV series. To ‘Jump the Shark’ was a phrase coined some eight years later by college roommates Sean Conn...

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 Cornell Daily Sun - the oldest continuously independent college daily newspaper in the United States - published its first issue on 16th September, 1880. It featured some campus sports reports, some horrible amateur poetry, and even some jokes. It wasn’t until seven years later that a British University caught up with its own equivalent: The Student, at Edinburgh University; although it did ha...

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 episode, Ar...

‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ is now well-known as the USA’s national anthem - but when Francis Scott Key wrote the words on 14th September, 1814, it was merely the latest in a series of patriotic poems he’d penned; this one concerning the British assault on the coastal fortification of Fort McHenry. It was only when - bizarrely - it was set to the tune of an old English drinking song, ‘To Anacreon i...

Kanye West was ejected from Radio City Music Hall at the MTV VMAs on 13th September, 2009, after drunkenly interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for Best Female Video. Distraught that the country star’s ‘You Belong To Me’ video has beaten Beyonce’s ‘Single Ladies’ to the trophy, he memorably proclaimed: “Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the...

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...

'The Hank McCune Show' - an otherwise unremarkable footnote in American TV history - became the first single-camera sitcom to deploy a pre-recorded laugh track (aka ‘canned laughter’) on 9th September, 1950. The giggles and applause came courtesy of Charlie Douglass, who made a career of capturing audience reaction in his ‘laff box’, and then expertly sprinkling it across other shows, including Be...

When U2’s new album, Songs Of Innocence, was rumoured to be bundled in with the iPhone 6 on 8th September, 2014, the band’s official spokespeople denied any involvement with Apple's product launch. But the following day, U2 did indeed turn up at Tim Cook’s keynote - with an initiative to ‘gift’ the album, for free, to over half a billion iTunes users. Within days, the scheme backfired, and Apple h...

Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov was shot by a poisoned pellet whilst walking on Waterloo Bridge on 7th September, 1978. Four days later, he was dead. He thought the bullet - believed to be filled with ricin - had emanated from the umbrella of a Soviet secret agent, and the British press labelled his assassination the ‘Poison Brolly Riddle’. In this episode, Olly, Rebecca and Arion explain how Marko...

Clarence Saunders opened the world’s first self-service supermarket, ‘Piggly Wiggly’, in Memphis, Tennessee on 6th September, 1916. Calculating that the revenues gained through impulse purchases would outweigh those lost from shoplifting, Saunders’ concept forever changed the world of shopping for groceries - but his business acumen did not last. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly review Sau...

Posing as a sailor, with a borrowed ‘Protection Pass’ in his pocket, Frederick Douglass boarded a train from Baltimore to Philadelphia on 3rd September, 1838 - and escaped the slavery into which he had been born.  To formalise the process, he had to dodge slave-catchers, change his name and pay for his freedom. He then became an abolitionist, orator and public intellectual - and one of the most ph...

Endurance swimmer Diana Nyad was 64 years old when she became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the use of a shark cage for protection on 2nd September, 2013. Nyad completed the 110-mile swim from Havana to Key West in approximately 53 hours. It was her fifth attempt to swim through the jellyfish-and shark-infested waters of the Straits of Florida. In this episode, Arion, Rebec...