Dave Does History

In July 1913, fifty years after the cannons fell silent at Gettysburg, something astonishing happened. More than 53,000 Civil War veterans—old enemies who once charged at each other with bayonets and bullets—returned to the battlefield not for war, but for peace. They came with canes instead of rifles, shaking hands across the same stone walls where they once fought and fell. The 50th Anniversary...

Caesar Rodney was no ordinary man. He was a physician, a farmer, and a military officer who had served in the Delaware Assembly. He was also one of the most ardent supporters of independence, but on the day of the vote, he was in Delaware, a 70-mile journey away from Philadelphia. Rodney had been in poor health and had been unable to attend the Continental Congress for some time. But on the day of...

In this episode of Dave Does History , we travel back to 1774 and examine the moment when the British Crown pushed too far and the American colonies finally stood together. Dave Bowman joins Bill Mick Live to explore the Intolerable Acts, a series of harsh laws meant to punish Massachusetts but which instead united the colonies in defiance. From the closure of Boston’s port to the often-overlooked...

On this episode of Dave Does History , we’re heading back to the summer of 1497, when a blacksmith and a lawyer led a march of 15,000 angry Cornishmen across southern England toward the gates of London. Their mission? To protest a tax they didn’t believe in, imposed by a king they barely recognized, for a war they had no stake in. It all ended in blood at Blackheath, and with two bodies swinging a...

In June of 1963, the Cold War stood like a concrete wall between freedom and tyranny—quite literally in Berlin. President John F. Kennedy, in one of the most electrifying moments of his presidency, traveled to the divided city to deliver a message not just to Germans, but to the world. With the phrase "Ich bin ein Berliner," he declared solidarity with those trapped behind the Iron Curta...

On a sweltering summer night in 1906, the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden became the stage for one of the most infamous murders in American history. Architect Stanford White, a towering figure of Gilded Age New York, was gunned down in front of hundreds by millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw. The motive? A beautiful young model named Evelyn Nesbit, caught in a web of seduction, obsession, and...

In this episode of Liberty 250 , we follow Benjamin Franklin’s journey from loyal servant of the British Crown to committed American revolutionary. It begins with the Hutchinson Letter Scandal, where Franklin’s attempt to ease tensions by quietly exposing colonial corruption backfires, igniting public fury and British outrage. Then comes the Boston Tea Party—a dramatic protest Franklin condemns as...

Before there were keyboards, before there were screens, there was the rhythmic clatter of metal keys striking paper. In this episode of Dave Does History , we’re rolling back to June 23, 1868—the day Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for a curious contraption called the “Type-Writer.” What started as a tinkerer’s solution to sloppy handwriting became one of the most transformative invent...

On this episode of Dave Does History , we dive into one of the most chilling coincidences in military history. Twice on June 22nd, Europe’s greatest powers launched full-scale invasions of Russia. First, it was Napoleon in 1812, leading the mighty Grande Armée into the East. Then, in 1941, Hitler unleashed Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion force the world had ever seen. Both men promised...

He wasn’t a household name, but Brigadier General Enoch Poor was one of George Washington’s most trusted officers and a hero of the American Revolution. Born a humble cabinetmaker, Poor became a successful shipbuilder, an early patriot, and a battlefield leader whose courage helped turn the tide at Saratoga and Monmouth. But his death in 1780—officially from typhus, possibly from a secret duel—rem...

In the summer of 1980, I was sixteen years old when I stepped into a theater and watched The Blues Brothers —my first R-rated film—and it knocked me flat in the best way. This wasn’t just a comedy. It was a riotous collision of rhythm, rebellion, and redemption. On this episode of Dave Does History , we’re diving headfirst into the madness behind the music, the wrecked police cruisers, and the rea...

In the middle of World War II, when pro football was scraping for survival and young men were trading helmets for helmets of a different kind, the NFL cooked up one of the strangest solutions in sports history: the Steagles. That’s right — the Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers merged into one team for the 1943 season. It was awkward, gritty, and surprisingly successful. Coaches who could...

On June 18, 1815 , in the muddy farmlands near a quiet Belgian village, the fate of Europe thundered to a climax. The Battle of Waterloo wasn’t just a clash of armies—it was the final, defiant gamble of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican general who had once crowned himself emperor and shaken the world. This episode of Dave Does History unpacks the drama, chaos, and consequences of that pivotal day....

In this explosive episode of Dave Does History , Dave Bowman joins Bill Mick to dissect the chain of events that lit the fuse of the American Revolution. From the biting street politics of the Sons of Liberty to the fatal musket blast on a snowy Boston night, Dave walks us through the Boston Massacre with sharp insight and sharp elbows. You'll meet a wigmaker’s apprentice, a furious redcoat, a...

They didn’t call it the United States Army, not yet. They called it the Continental Army. It wasn’t much to look at. Ragtag farmers and tradesmen with worn boots and mismatched coats, some carrying their grandfather’s musket, others with nothing but a pitchfork and righteous anger. But it was the beginning of something that still stands strong today.

On this episode of Dave Does History , we take a royal detour into the wonderfully weird coincidence of two medieval monarchs who shared more than a bloodline—they shared a birthday. June 13 gave us Charles the Bald and Charles the Fat, two kings from the Carolingian dynasty who ruled over fractured empires with wildly different styles and very different waistlines. One rebuilt cavalry and outwitt...

On June 12, 1775, just days before the Battle of Bunker Hill, British General Thomas Gage made a desperate move. Surrounded in Boston by angry colonial militias, Gage issued a formal proclamation declaring martial law across Massachusetts. It was a bold attempt to restore order, offering pardons to rebels—except for two: Samuel Adams and John Hancock. But rather than break the back of the rebellio...

In the summer of 1776, as the colonies stood on the edge of revolution, five men were tasked with putting the cause of liberty into words. They weren’t soldiers or generals, but thinkers, writers, and statesmen. Together, they formed what history remembers as the Committee of Five. Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and Livingston weren’t just drafting a political statement—they were writing the...

If you think the revolution started with Jefferson’s pen, this hour will make you rethink everything. Listen now to “The Sons of Liberty” and find out what really happened when rebellion wore gang colors and carried torches through Boston’s streets.

It’s tempting to look at this as ancient history, dusty and irrelevant. But there’s a lesson here that still echoes. Democracies don’t die in flames. They die in whispers. In backroom deals. In the slow erosion of trust. They die when people give up, when elites conspire, when fear replaces conviction.

On  June 8, 1967 , in the sunlit waters of the eastern Mediterranean, an American ship flew the Stars and Stripes over calm seas. Her name was the USS Liberty, a lightly armed intelligence vessel serving under the National Security Agency. She carried 294 crew members, including sailors, Marines, and NSA linguists trained in Arabic and Russian. That morning, the Liberty cruised peacefully, 13 mile...

It was  June 7, 1776 , a heavy summer day in Philadelphia. The streets simmered with tension, and inside the State House, the Second Continental Congress sat on the edge of history. The men in that room had argued, pleaded, and petitioned for peace, but now the moment had come to talk about war. Not just war with muskets, but a war of ideas, a war of separation. That morning, a tall Virginian name...

On June 6, 1918, in a quiet forest just thirty-nine miles from Paris, the United States Marine Corps stepped into history—and hell. At Belleau Wood, fresh American forces met a hardened German enemy in a battle that would come to define the character of the Corps and the cost of liberty. It was the deadliest single day in Marine Corps history up to that time, with more than a thousand casualties s...

On this episode of Dave Does History , we take a long, hard look at one of the most controversial figures of the American West—Pat Garrett. You probably know him as the man who shot Billy the Kid, but Garrett’s story runs far deeper than that single, fateful moment in a darkened New Mexico bedroom. Born in Alabama, raised in Louisiana, and forged by the chaos of post-Civil War America, Garrett ros...

On this episode of Dave Does History , we take a closer look at one of the most misunderstood figures of the American Revolution, King George III. To many Americans, he is the villain in powdered wigs and red coats, the tyrant Jefferson scorned in the Declaration. But the real George was far more complex, a young man thrust into power, wrestling with political chaos abroad and personal demons at h...