Today In History with The Retrospectors

The first women’s public toilets in London opened on Bedford St on 11th February, 1852 - attempting to capitalize on the success of George Jennings’ ‘monkey closets’, used by over 800,000 visitors to the 1851 Great Exhibition. Unfortunately, even though the facility had been fought for by campaigning women’s sanitary organizations, middle and upper class Victorian ladies were not yet prepared to p...

Hanna-Barbera’s classic cat-and-mouse cartoon series Tom and Jerry kicked off when their debut short, ‘Puss Gets The Boot’, was released by MGM on 10th February, 1940.  But, at that time, the stars of the film were known as ‘Jasper and Jinx’. And studio bosses very nearly canned the whole concept - until the audience feedback, and awards nominations, started rolling in… In this episode, Arion, Reb...

Just three months after Magic Johnson retired from basketball due to his HIV diagnosis, he made a triumphant return on 9th February, 1992 - at the NBA All-Star Game in Orlando, Florida. The sports world was divided—some players, like Michael Jordan, welcomed him back, while others, like Karl Malone, were hesitant, voicing concerns about physical contact on the court. But when Johnson stepped out,...

Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia was executed by the Bolsheviks in 1917 - yet, on 6th February, 1928, a mentally troubled Polish factory worker claiming to be her was welcomed to New York by Romanov associates. Anna Anderson’s claim to be the Tsar’s daughter climaxed in a 32-year legal saga, the longest in German history. But posthumous DNA testing debunked her claim, revealing no connection to t...

United Artists, a new company formed by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith - four of the most powerful figures in early cinema - was announced on 5th February 1919. The movie trade press quickly labelled it a ‘rebellion’ against the mainstream studios. Declaring their new enterprise would exist to “protect the industry from itself”, the Hollywood quartet took aim...

Disguised variously as a baseball umpire, NFL referee, pro golfer, and even Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, Barry Bremen earned his reputation as America’s greatest pitch invader - a career that kicked off on 4th February, 1979. Dressed as a player for the Kansas City Kings, the 32 year-old insurance salesman crashed the court of an NBA All-Star basketball game - much to the delight of fellow players...

With a cast of over 800, and a budget equivalent to £3 million, James Shirley’s extravagant masque ‘The Triumph of Peace’ was performed on 3rd February, 1634. Unusually, it was such a popular show that, despite the enormous cost of staging it, King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria requested that it be repeated. Though replete with all the arse-kissing allegorical tableaux that typified these ce...

Leonarde Keeler, inventor of the modern polygraph, first showcased his device in a courtroom on 2nd February, 1935. The wooden box, which measured physiological responses like blood pressure and respiration, took the stand alongside him, and, while Keeler emphasized the machine wasn’t infallible, he later told journalists assembled outside the venue that his invention would soon revolutionise crim...

Revolutionary leader Oliver Cromwell was executed on 30th January, 1661 - despite having been dead for more than two years. His body was exhumed from its tomb in Westminster Abbey on the instruction of King Charles II, who sought retribution for those involved in the trial and execution of his father, Charles I. Along with other Regicides, Cromwell’s corpse was disinterred and subjected to public...

The BBC broadcast the first ever edition of Roy Plomley’s ‘Desert Island Discs’ - the world’s longest-running interview programme - on 29th January, 1942.  Opening, as the show still does, with Eric Coates’s theme music ‘By the Sleepy Lagoon’, the episode welcomed comedian Vic Oliver as the series’ first ‘castaway’. Plomely would go on to present a further 1,785 editions of the show until his deat...

Stud-and-tube bricks, which paved the way for Lego to become one of the most successful companies in Denmark, were patented on 28th January, 1958. But this family business had already been in existence for 26 years, mostly making wooden toys. It later emerged, however, that the plastic self-locking bricks that brought them so much success had in fact already been invented - and patented - by Briti...

The corpse of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union, was placed on display in Moscow's Red Square on 27th January, 1924 - where, astonishingly, he remains viewable to this day.  He’d wanted to be buried next to his mother in Saint Petersburg, but after he suffered a series of strokes, the Soviet government instead secretly planned to build a mausoleum for his body, in part to deify him as a...

The U.S. Postal Service permitted parcel delivery for packages under 11 pounds in 1913 - parameters which were pushed to their limits on 26th January, 1913, when Ohio couple Jesse and Matilda Beagle set a bizarre precedent by mailing their baby, James, a mile up the road to his grandmother. As Parcel Fever swept the nation, other parents began to use the Postal Service as an affordable alternative...

Elephants have played a surprisingly important role on the battlefield, even before the birth of Christ; notably in 5th Century BCE India, and during the Punic Wars in Africa.  But on 23rd January, 971, the Southern Han division of the Chinese military retired their famous elephant corps forever - after facing a massive aerial assault from crossbowmen from the Song Dynasty, who had defeated them i...

George Metesky’s campaign of terror as ‘the Mad Bomber of New York’ ended abruptly on 22nd January, 1957. Between 1940 and 1956, he had planted at least 32 bombs in public places, including theatres, railway stations, libraries, and landmarks such as Grand Central Terminal.  Police arrived just before midnight at his modest home in Waterbury, Connecticut, which he shared with his two sisters, and...

Henri Littière and his adulterous wife Suzanne thought they’d come up with a novel way to combat her philandering - by commissioning a custom-made chastity belt. But on 21st January, 1934, Littière was sentenced to three months in prison for cruelty to his spouse. It’s a strange story, but not half as weird as how the myth of chastity belts gained traction in the first place - not from medieval da...

According to Finnish legend, a peasant farmer named Lalli murdered the Christian missionary Bishop Henry on the ice of lake Köyliönjärvi on January 20, 1156, dispatching him with an axe blow to the head. It is fair to say things didn’t go terribly well for Lalli after that. He met a gruesome fate that takes various forms depending on the tale you read, but in general Lalli takes the bishop's mitre...

Celebrated medium Helen Duncan was arrested on 19th January, 1944, when, midway through one of her séances, an undercover policeman dramatically revealed her "spirit" to be nothing more than… herself draped in white fabric.  Initially charged with minor fraud, her case took a wild turn when she became the last woman imprisoned under the 1735 Witchcraft Act. Duncan’s trial, steeped in wartime paran...

It had a budget of just $1 million, a lead actor wearing a toupee, and the baddie in the first draft of the script was a monkey. But the first James Bond film, ‘Dr. No’, which began shooting in Jamaica on 16th January, 1962, kicked off a phenomenally successful franchise that’s still a staple of cinema today. Its star, Sean Connery, had been picked out by producers after his appearance in a Disney...

A roaring wave of syrup swept through the North End of Boston on 15th January, 1919, in an event that claimed 21 lives, including 2 children, and came to be known as the “Great Molasses Flood”.  At the heart of the disaster was a rushed, badly built industrial tank: the steel was too thin, the materials were faulty, leaks were ignored (and literally painted over), and warning signs were dismissed....

Disney’s long-awaited feature ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ was rapturously received at Radio City, New York, inspiring three-hour queues for tickets. The reviews that America woke up to on 14th January 1938 were euphoric: a masterpiece had landed. “It is a classic as important cinematically as The Birth Of A Nation”, Frank Nugent wrote in The New York Times.  “You’ll not, most of the time, re...

It was today in history in 1404 that Henry IV issued the Act Against Multipliers, a ban on the mysterious art of creating or duplicating gold, more commonly known as alchemy. It came at an odd time for European science because the widespread efforts to transform so-called base metals, such as lead or copper, into noble metals, such as silver or gold, while futile, actually aided the discovery of t...

Octavia Hill, Hardwicke Rawnsley, and Sir Robert Hunter founded The National Trust on January 12, 1895, with an intention to preserve Britain’s natural beauty and historic treasures for the public and future generations. The founders’ efforts reflected the late Victorian spirit of social and environmental reform, championed by figures like John Ruskin and William Morris. Rawnsley led early efforts...

Naval commander Horatio Nelson became the first non-Royal to receive a full British state funeral on 9th January, 1806, when tens of thousands of mourners lined the streets of London to pay tribute to their fallen hero - including, surprisingly, his defeated counterpart, French admiral Pierre-Charles de Villeneuve.  The anticipation for the burial was fuelled by the nationalistic fervour that deve...

John Stewart was elected MP for Lymington, Hampshire on 8th January, 1833.  On paper, he seemed a textbook member of Britain’s elite: wealthy, well-connected, educated in England, and a plantation owner.  But Stewart’s mother was an enslaved woman, making him considered by many to be Britain’s first Black MP. Yet Stewart did not enter Parliament to challenge slavery or injustice. Rather, he was an...