Dave Does History

In this episode of Dave Does History on Bill Mick Live , we head into the winter of 1775, a moment when America stood at the edge of decision but hadn’t yet taken the leap. The muskets had fired at Lexington and Concord. The King had declared the colonies in rebellion. But most Americans still clung to the hope of reconciliation. That changed with the arrival of one powerful pamphlet. Thomas Paine...

On this episode of Dave Does History , we saddle up for one of the strangest spectacles ever to grace the American sporting landscape: Donkey Baseball. That is right. In towns across the country during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, people paid good money to watch their neighbors try to play ball while riding reluctant, ornery donkeys. What started as a Depression-era gimmick turned into a fundraising s...

In today’s episode of Dave Does History , we journey back to a summer day in 1900, when Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II stepped onto a platform in Bremerhaven and let loose one of the most infamous speeches in modern imperial history. As German troops prepared to sail for China to join the fight against the Boxer Rebellion, the Kaiser delivered what has come to be known as the "Hun Speech."...

In the summer of 1958, the United States quietly launched a small satellite that carried a very big secret. Explorer 4 wasn’t just another science mission. It was part of a classified effort to understand what happens when nuclear weapons are detonated in space. Designed by Dr. James Van Allen’s team and launched aboard a Juno I rocket, Explorer 4 became the first satellite to observe both natural...

Wyoming has always held a special place in my heart. It is one of those rare places that still feels untamed, where the sky stretches without apology and the land remembers everything. If life ever lines up just right, I’d love to settle there, not just visit, but stay and listen to what the wind has to say. In this episode of Dave Does History , we’re heading back to July 25, 1868 , when the Terr...

Amelia Earhart wasn’t just a pilot. She was a force of nature wrapped in leather and sky. In this episode of Dave Does History , we trace the arc of her remarkable life—from her bold, tomboy beginnings in Kansas to the cockpit of the Lockheed Electra that carried her into legend. She didn’t break barriers gently. She tore through them at altitude, shattering expectations for what women could do in...

On this episode of Dave Does History , we’re taking a bite out of something sweet, simple, and surprisingly historic: vanilla ice cream. July 23 is National Vanilla Ice Cream Day, and while some folks might shrug at vanilla as “plain,” the truth is anything but. This flavor has roots that stretch from the ancient empires of Mesoamerica to the refined kitchens of Monticello. Along the way, it gathe...

In this episode of Dave Does History , we step into the uneasy months before independence, when not everyone in the colonies was ready to break with the Crown. Some still believed King George III could be reasoned with, that he might rise above Parliament and become the kind of monarch Enlightenment thinkers dreamed of. John Dickinson’s Olive Branch Petition was a final appeal to that idea, a hope...

On this episode of Dave Does History , we go back to a moment when the Civil War still wore a fresh coat of naivety. July 21, 1861. The first major clash between North and South unfolds near a muddy Virginia stream called Bull Run. People thought this would be over quickly. They brought picnic baskets. They brought their kids. What they got instead was a violent wake-up call. Union troops, raw and...

On this episode of Dave Does History , we go back to July 20, 1976, a day that lit the fuse on a lifetime passion for space. At just twelve years old, I watched as Viking 1 became the first American spacecraft to land safely on Mars. It wasn’t a movie. It wasn’t science fiction. It was real, and it was glorious. Viking wasn’t just a piece of hardware. It was a question on legs, asking the Red Plan...

Before sunrise on July 19, 1845 , Lower Manhattan stirred under the weight of another blistering summer. Most of the city slept, unaware that a moment of carelessness or perhaps a faulty flame in a whale oil shop would turn calm into catastrophe. The fire began in the early hours inside J.L. Van Doren’s candle and whale oil business at 34 New Street. A single blaze, born in a building filled with...

On this episode of Dave Does History , we take a sobering look at one of the most haunting nights of the 20th century: the brutal execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family by Bolshevik revolutionaries on July 17, 1918 . It wasn’t a battlefield. It wasn’t a courtroom. And it certainly wasn’t justice. It was a dark cellar, a lie about a photograph, and a hail of bullets that ended over 300...

On July 16, 1950, in the early chaos of the Korean War, a Catholic chaplain named Father Herman Felhoelter made a choice that would define the very idea of sacrifice. Surrounded by wounded American soldiers who could not be moved, he stayed behind as the enemy advanced. He knelt to pray over the dying and was gunned down mid-prayer, alongside the men he refused to leave. This is the story of the C...

This week on Dave Does History on Bill Mick Live , we take you back to the morning that changed the world—April 19, 1775. It didn’t begin with a declaration. It began with whispers, riders, and a few dozen men standing on Lexington Green. These weren’t revolutionaries yet. They were farmers, tradesmen, and teenagers who had simply had enough. Dave brings a personal lens to the story, tracing the f...

In the summer of 1798, the young American republic faced a moment of crisis. Gripped by fear of foreign enemies and internal dissent, Congress passed a series of laws that would become known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. Pitched as national security measures during the undeclared Quasi-War with France, these laws instead became a hammer used against political opponents and a direct challenge to...

In the summer of 1787, while America’s greatest political minds were huddled in Philadelphia crafting the Constitution, another crucial act of nation-building was quietly unfolding in New York. The Confederation Congress, often remembered more for its failures than its triumphs, passed the Northwest Ordinance—one of the most influential pieces of legislation in American history. This wasn’t just a...

On July 12, 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt rolled into Pueblo, Colorado aboard his special train, stood on the rear platform, and delivered a brief but memorable speech. The weather was pleasant, the crowd was cheerful, and FDR, ever the showman, tossed out a line that still echoes today: “We want to make democracy work.” It sounded noble. It sounded patriotic. But what did he mean by it? A...

On this episode of Dave Does History, we set our sights on one of the toughest warships to ever sail under the American flag—the USS Nevada. Launched in 1914 and sunk, finally, in 1948, the Nevada wasn’t just a battleship. She was a brawler. She took a torpedo at Pearl Harbor, shook off six bombs, stood back up, and got back into the fight. She bombarded beaches from Normandy to Okinawa and even s...

Today on Dave Does History, we’re cracking open one of the dustier chapters of the American presidency—one that begins not with fireworks and fanfare, but with cherries and spoiled milk. When President Zachary Taylor died unexpectedly on July 9, 1850, the nation turned to a man most Americans barely knew: Vice President Millard Fillmore. What followed was a presidency built on compromise, cautious...

July 9, 1755. The forests of western Pennsylvania echoed with musket fire, panic, and the cries of wounded men as the mighty British Empire came face to face with a kind of war it didn’t understand. At the center of it all was a proud general who wouldn’t listen, an outnumbered enemy who knew the terrain, and a young Virginian named George Washington who refused to break. The Battle of the Mononga...

On July 8, 1898, one of the Wild West’s most infamous con men met his end not in a saloon or a courtroom, but on a weathered dock at the edge of Skagway, Alaska. Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith had made a career out of charming suckers and swindling prospectors, running everything from fake lotteries to rigged card games. He called himself a protector of order, but the people of Skagway saw throu...

On this episode of Dave Does History , we’re heading back to the summer of 1520, deep into the heart of Mesoamerica, where a broken band of Spanish conquistadors found themselves surrounded by thousands of Aztec warriors on the dusty plains of Otumba. Hernán Cortés was battered, outnumbered, and on the brink of ruin. What happened next wasn’t a miracle—it was desperation, steel nerves, and a reckl...

He’s remembered for one of the boldest lines in American history— “I have not yet begun to fight!” —but the real John Paul Jones was far more complicated than a single quote. In this episode of Dave Does History , we sail straight into the stormy life of the man who took the American Revolution to Britain’s own shores, fought a burning ship into legend, and became both a national hero and an inter...

Before America declared its independence, before anyone started talking seriously about revolution, the colonists made one last desperate appeal to their king. It was called the Olive Branch Petition, and it wasn’t a threat. It was a love letter. In this episode of Dave Does History , we’re going back to the summer of 1775, when American leaders still believed King George III might save them from...

On this episode of Dave Does History , we’re headed down to the bluffs of Mississippi, where, on July 4th, 1863, the city of Vicksburg surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant. While the cannons still cooled in Gettysburg, Grant’s army delivered the blow that split the Confederacy in two and gave President Lincoln reason to declare that “the Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.” It wasn’...