Today In History with The Retrospectors

Extracts from Adolf Hitler's long-lost diaries were brought to the world’s attention on 22nd April, 1983, provoking an international sensation - until they were quickly exposed for being a hoax.  Respected World War Two historian Hugh Trevor Roper had authenticated the diaries, leading Rupert Murdoch to personally negotiate a $1.2 million serialisation in The Sunday Times, which went to press as R...

Germany’s most famous fighter pilot, Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen (aka ‘The Red Baron’) was shot down near the Somme River on the Western Front, on 21st April 1918. He had been credited with an incredible 80 air combat victories during World War I.  Originally a cavalryman, Richthofen transferred to the Imperial Air Service and downed 15 enemy planes by the end of 1916. He then headed...

The Houston Astrodome was a marvel of modern engineering: the world’s first fully covered sports stadium; a futuristic symbol of Houston’s rise as the home of NASA’s Mission Control. But, after its glorious see-through roof created a blinding glare that made it nearly impossible for baseball players to see the ball… on 20th April, 1965, the panels had to be painted over. And the grass on the pitch...

A 335-year-long ‘war’ (in which not a single shot was fired) officially ended on 17th April, 1986, when the UK’s Dutch ambassador landed on the Isles of Scilly and declared an end to hostilities between the Netherlands and this tiny archipelago off the coast of Cornwall.  The origins of this eccentric conflict date back to 1651, during the English Civil War, where the Dutch found themselves indire...

Queen Elizabeth II stood before 30,000 spectators at Clydebank to launch HMY Britannia on 16th April, 1953. The yacht’s name had been kept secret, and when the Queen finally declared it “Britannia”, the crowd responded with a surge of cheering applause.  Commissioned shortly before the death of her father, King George VI, the ship was intended to help the Royal family maintain personal ties across...

Tommy Cooper's unexpected death on stage at Her Majesty's Theatre on 15th April, 1984 remains one of the saddest and most surreal moments in UK comedy history.  Known for his slapstick humour and botched magic tricks, family favourite Cooper collapsed mid-act due to a massive heart attack.  The audience, initially assuming it was part of his act, roared with laughter as he lay on the stage emittin...

Jamie Oliver blasted on to British screens when his first TV series, ‘The Naked Chef’ premiered on BBC Two on 14th April, 1999.  Created by Pat Llewellyn for Optomen, the show was revolutionary for its use of jumpy, close-up camera work, and the presenter’s relaxed style and laddishness. The series and subsequent cookbook was credited with inspiring men to take to the kitchen, due to Oliver’s “blo...

Project MKUltra, a CIA program aimed at mastering mind control, secretly started on 13th April, 1953, supposedly to combat Soviet brainwashing. It soon evolved into a bizarre mix of government-sponsored LSD experiments and psychological torture. Led by Sidney Gottlieb, a chemist with a penchant for poisons, the program dosed often unwitting subjects—including CIA agents, prisoners and sex workers—...

Bananas, the world’s favourite fruit, were first displayed in London on 10th April, 1633, in the shop window of botanist Thomas Johnson, editor for Gerard’s Herball. Despite societal taboos surrounding the banana's suggestive shape, its journey from obscurity to ubiquity was later propelled by Minor Cooper Keith, whose entrepreneurial endeavours in Costa Rica transformed the fruit into a global co...

Spain began to expel Moriscos - the descendants of Muslims who had converted, often under pressure, to Christianity - on 9th April, 1609.  Although many had lived alongside Christian neighbours for generations, political suspicion lingered, and King Phillip III increasingly viewed them as a problem to be solved rather than a community to be integrated: expelling the Moriscos offered a way to asser...

Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler’s bestseller ‘Nudge’ was released on 8th April, 2008, catapulting a new method of behavioural economics into the public psyche - and the hands of policymakers, including David Cameron and Barack Obama. The book challenged the notion of humans as rational decision-makers, and explained how companies, governments and individuals can ‘nudge’ people towards healthier h...

Former First Lady Betty Ford quietly marked what she would later call her “sobriety birthday” on 7 April 1978: a deeply personal victory following years of dependence on prescription medication and alcohol.  Though the milestone itself was private, it came just days after a profoundly difficult family intervention at her home in Rancho Mirage, where her husband, former President Gerald Ford, and t...

3M scientist Spencer Silver created the adhesive that makes Post-It Notes sticky back in 1968 - but it wasn’t until 6th April, 1980 that the stationery product we all know and love was first released to consumers, in a promotional effort the company termed ‘The Boiasie Blitz’. The problem? His "invention" wasn’t what his company wanted. Rather than strong, industrial-grade glue, Silver had acciden...

Gottlieb Daimler's patent for his high-speed petrol engine (dubbed the "Grandfather Clock") on 3rd April, 1885, wasn't just a technological breakthrough—it inadvertently birthed the motorbike.  Teaming up with Wilhelm Maybach, the duo had crafted a compact engine featuring float-metered carburetors and mushroom intake valves, all powered by hot tube ignition. This engine found its way into their f...

With a single, deliberate shot, Roger Sharpe played pinball for the council of the New York City Council chamber on 2 April 1976, theatrically overturning a 34-year ban on the game by proving it could be a game of skill.  The city’s censorship of the game had its roots in the economic strain of the Great Depression and the moral recalibrations following Prohibition, when pinball machines, often fo...

One of the most famous hoaxes in broadcasting history aired on the BBC’s revered Panorama programme on April Fools Day, 1957: a segment purporting to show a “spaghetti harvest” taking place near Lake Lugano. According to the report, mild weather and the disappearance of a “spaghetti weevil” had resulted in trees unseasonably laden with strands of pasta.  The prank originated with Charles de Jaeger...

It became known as the ‘Skandalkonzert’: an evening of expressionist, experimental pieces at Vienna’s Great Hall of the Musikverein on March 31, 1913, which so disturbed the audience that rioting and slapping ensued, followed by a lawsuit.  In time, it established the reputations of The Second Viennese School - a group of composers like Shoenberg and Weber, who sought to break away from the tradit...

When Starbucks opened in Pike Place, Seattle, on March 30th, 1971, it was a simple shop selling whole coffee beans, tea, and spices - with no creamy macchiatos or pumpkin spice lattes in sight. Founders Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegel, and Gordon Bowker, mentored by Dutch coffee trader Alfred Peet, never intended the store to become a cafe. But then Howard Schultz joined as Marketing Manager. After a vi...

Julius Caesar intervened to put his lover and ally Cleopatra on the Egyptian throne on 27th March, 47 BC - cementing their position as the world’s premier Power Couple. But Cleo's ascent to power was not just a power play. Rather, it was a desperate bid for survival - as she had been ousted from the throne by her brother's advisors, and feared assassination.  In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Ol...

The mass suicide of 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult in San Diego County was discovered on 26th March, 1997. The tragedy came to light after a former member alerted authorities, having received a farewell videotape recorded by the group.  Leader Marshall Applewhite had preached that a spacecraft travelling in the wake of the Comet Hale–Bopp would carry their souls to a higher level of existenc...

Each Lady Day, the Hampshire village of Tichborne hands out bags of flour to the  locals - a tradition that began on 25th March, 1150 after Lady Marbella Tichborne, on her death-bed, suggested distributing a ‘Tichborne Dole’ to the needy.  It’s far from the only quaint charity event still going strong in England. In the Kentish village of Biddenden each Easter Monday, locals indulge in ‘Biddenden...

The first international women’s sports event, The Women’s Olympiad, kicked off in Monte Carlo on 24th March, 1921. A hundred athletes from five nations competed in track and field events, defying the male-dominated Olympic movement that excluded women from all sports except tennis, golf, sailing and croquet. Created by campaigner Alice Milliat, the event showcased the skills of pioneering athletes...

Ricky Martin’s ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’ was released on 23rd March, 1999 - launching the singer to worldwide superstardom, and kickstarting a Latino pop boom that propelled J-Lo, Shakira, Christina Aguilera, Enrique Iglesias and Santana into the charts. But he wasn’t an overnight success. He had already conquered the Latin music world, starred on General Hospital, and even nabbed the official 1998 FI...

The bubonic plague was blamed on witches, Jews, God’s wrath, and, on 20th March 1345, in a new theory propagated by the King of France, the rare planetary alignment between Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in Aquarius. Of course, the real cause of the Black Death lay in the microscopic world of bacteria, carried by fleas on rats. But mediaeval society, ill-equipped to comprehend the science behind the pa...

Blaise Pascal created the first organised public transport system: the carrosses à cinq sols (“five-sou carriages”), which had its first full day of service in Paris on 19th March, 1662. Like a modern bus, the horse-drawn carriages followed fixed routes and scheduled departures, running whether or not they were full; a scheme authorised by royal patent under the reign of Louis XIV, granting Pascal...