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Today In History with The Retrospectors

The Retrospectors

BEST DAILY SHOW (British Podcast Awards Nominee, 2026). Curious, funny, surprising daily history - with Olly Mann (Answer Me This!), Rebecca Messina (The Week Unwrapped) and Arion McNicoll (The Chaser). From the invention of the Game Boy to the Mancunian beer-poisoning of 1900, from Julius Caesar"s invasion of Britain to America"s Nazi summer schools... each day we uncover an unexpected story for the ages. In just ten minutes! Get early access and ad-free listening at Patreon.com/Retrospectors or

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All Episodes

13:08

The One Man Submarine

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/09/07

America’s first attempt at submarine warfare set sail - or rather, sank - off the coast of New York on 7th September, 1776. ‘The Turtle’ was the brainchild of David Bushnell, a former Yale student who built a wooden, barrel-shaped craft secretly equipped to drill a hole in a British warship, and attach an explosive charge. The vessel had ballast tanks, a hand-cranked propeller, and a snorkel for air - giving the operator about 30 minutes of breathing time. For lighting, candles were too risky, so

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12:15

The Night The Earls Vanished

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/09/04

When 90 Irish nobles, led by the Earl of Tyrconnell and the Earl of Tyrone, fled for Normandy in the dead of night on 4th September, 1607, their intentions were not entirely clear.Their escape, which became known as the ‘Flight of the Earls’, was mainly a bid for freedom from the tightening grip of English Protestant rule - but did they intend to return, securing support for a rebellion against England en route? Or simply seek refuge in Rome, amidst an increasingly impossible situation for

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11:36

Becoming Frederick Douglass

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/09/03

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 - andone of the most photographed men of the 19th century. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly consider how Douglass’s

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13:26

The Teen Who Flew Into Red Square

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/09/02

West German amateur pilot Mathias Rust went on trial on 2nd September 1987. Three months earlier, the teenager had flown a rented Cessna 172 from Helsinki deep into Soviet airspace, eventually landing beside Moscow's Red Square. His stated aim was a peace mission - he had wanted to meet Mikhail Gorbachev and make a dramatic statement about East-West relations. The Soviet court was unimpressed, charging him with illegal border-crossing, violating international flight regulations and

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13:27

Candle In The Wind II

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/09/01

On 1st September 1997, as Britain was still reeling from Diana Princess of Wales’ untimely death, Elton John’s Candle in the Wind 1997 turned up on a shortlist of potential music to be performed at her funeral.The song, which had been reworked and rerecorded in just a few days, had originally been written about Marilyn Monroe. The original had been a moderate success, charting at Number 5 in the UK charts and 6 in the US. The 1997 update, meanwhile, which was released the day after the princess’s

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12:20

America's First Bank Robbery

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/08/31

The Bank of Pennsylvania opened to discover that an astonishing $162,821 (around $3 million today) had vanished without a trace on 31st August, 1798. With no smashed windows, and no blown-apart safes, suspicion naturally fell on someone with inside knowledge. But Suspect #1 in America’s first bank robbery - Patrick Lyon, a highly respected blacksmith who had recently worked on the vault’s locks - was, in fact, completely innocent. He knew who he thought the culprits were, but his decision to

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13:39

The Dizzy Leap From Brooklyn Bridge

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/08/28

Larry Donovan made headlines by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge on 28th August, 1886: a daring feat that earned him the name of the ‘Champion Jumper of the World’ and a reputation for daredevil jumps that ultimately led to his early death. Donovan, who worked for the Police Gazette, an early men's magazine filled with sensational stories, prepared for the jump via a mix of practicality and showmanship, deploying weighted shoes to maintain his posture during the fall and padded leggings for

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11:08

The Birth of Ladybird Books

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/08/27

The British Museum Library registered the legal deposit of the first ever 'Ladybird Series' titles, from publishers Wills & Hepworth (later 'Ladybird') on 27th August, 1914.The books - 'Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales' and 'Tiny Tots Travels' - didn't look at all like the classic Ladybird books we think of today - but were the beginning of a publishing legacy that changed children’s books forever. In this episode, Olly, Rebecca and Arion explain how the classic Ladybird look - fashioned from one

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12:53

The Man Who Lived in the Airport

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/08/26

The inspiration for Steven Spielberg movie ‘The Terminal’, Iranian refugee Mehran Karimi Nasseri, began his incredible 18-year stint inside Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport on 26th August 1988.With hopes of flying to Britain, he had found himself trapped in a bureaucratic no-man’s-land after travelling without documents. Answering to ‘Sir Alfred’, he began to carve out a new personality for himself, living on a red bench surrounded by luggage, airport shops and the relentless rhythms of

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12:04

Noodles: The World's Convenience Food

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/08/25

Nissin Chikin Ramen (日清チキンラーメン), the first marketed brand of instant noodles, launched in Japan on 25th August, 1958. The product was created by Momofuku Ando, who developed the production method of flash frying noodles after they had been made, thereby drying them and extending their shelf life. His inspiration sprung from the food scarcity in Japan after the Second World War, and the Ministry of Health’s attempts to distribute unpopular U.S.-supplied bread. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and

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13:26

The Godfather of Graffiti

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/08/24

Darryl McCray, better known as ‘Cornbread’, was honoured at the Graffiti Hall of Fame in Harlem on 24th August, 2013. But it was in 1960s Philadelphia that he’d made his name… by spraying it all over the city, becoming street art’s first serial ‘tagger’ in the process.Unlike gangs, who tagged to claim turf, the teenage Cornbread simply wanted to be noticed - and he was, declaring his love for a girl named Cynthia by writing “Cornbread Loves Cynthia” across the city, much to her parents’ horror

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12:26

The Voodoo Revolution

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/08/21

The creation of Haiti was the culmination of a slave revolt that began on a stormy night in the dense woods of Bois Caïman in Saint-Domingue, on 21st September, 1791, when a Voodoo ceremony led by the Jamaican-born priest Dutty Boukman called upon the enslaved Africans to reject their masters and embrace freedom in a bloody uprising.Saint-Domingue was France’s most lucrative colony, producing vast quantities of sugar, coffee, cotton, and indigo. However, this wealth came at an enormous human cost

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11:38

One Direction: The Movie

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/08/20

‘This Is Us’ premiered at the Odeon Leicester Square on 20th August, 2013. 10,000 ‘Directioners’, some of whom had slept rough for three nights, were there to catch a glimpse of their favourite boyband.The documentary, directed by ‘Supersize Me’s Morgan Spurlock, went on to take $18m in its Labor Day opening weekend in the US - but failed to scale the heights of Justin Beiber’s effort, ‘Never Say Never’. In this episode, Olly, Rebecca and Arion unpick the secret of the boys’ success; explain why

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13:09

The CIA's Iranian Coup

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/08/19

Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup backed by the CIA and MI6 on 19th August, 1953. He had nationalised Iran's oil industry, threatening the British stake in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP), fuelling American fears of the spread of Communism.Britain initially responded with an economic blockade, and the Americans initially stayed out, but Cold War fears about Soviet influence eventually persuaded President Eisenhower's administration to get involved. Following the coup, what had

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11:06

Discovering Helium

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/08/18

French astronomer Pierre Jules César Janssen became the first person to observe helium, an element never before seen on Earth, on August 18th, 1868. Janssen had been observing a total solar eclipse in Guntur, India when he noticed a bright yellow line with a wavelength of 587.49 nanometers in the spectrum of the chromosphere of the Sun. He initially assumed the line to be sodium, but, upon further investigating his hunch that it might be a new element, concluded he had stumbled upon something

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11:12

The Man Who Invented Seat Belts

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/08/17

Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin patented the three-point seatbelt while working for Volvo, on 17th August 1959. Prior to that, cars only had lap belts - basically a single strap across your waist - if they were fitted at all. Volvo made the patent open to all manufacturers, which boosted global take-up, and enhanced their Safety First brand image. But manufacturers and governments alike were surprisingly hostile to seatbelts at first... Some car owners in the U.S. even had them removed, claiming

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12:59

Inside The Stanford Prison Experiment

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/08/14

The Stanford Prison Experiment, created by Philip Zimbardo, began on 14th August, 1971.24 male college students volunteered to be assigned roles as either ‘guard’ or ‘prisoner’ in a mock jail: the ‘prisoners’ were ‘arrested’ by real cops outside their family homes and marched down to a Police Station before being transferred to their imitation incarceration. Once inside, they were stripped, deloused, and given smocks and ID numbers; while guards were outfitted with khaki uniforms, mirrored

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11:26

The Fake King of Albania

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/08/13

German circus performer Otto Witte went to his death-bed claiming he had been crowned King of Albania on 13th August, 1913 for a five-day reign which culminated with him being chased out of the country as an imposter.Generally believed to have been a fantasist who invented the story, Witte was humoured by the German authorities in his life-time, and his tombstone in Hamburg bears the inscription, ‘former King of Albania’. In this episode, Rebecca, Olly and Arion explore the phenomenon of the

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13:01

Ford Puts The World On Wheels

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/08/12

The Ford Model T rolled into production on 12th August, 1908, still hand-assembled in much the same way as its rivals. But Henry Ford’s ambition for the car was bigger: to create a reliable, durable motor that ordinary Americans could realistically afford - a dream he later realised by deploying a moving assembly line.Built from tough vanadium steel, the car could cope with the rutted, muddy roads of early 20th-century America better than many rivals. It had a 20-horsepower engine which was easy

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11:22

America's Biggest Mall

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/08/11

The Mall of America, in Bloomington, Minnesota, opened on 11th August, 1992, with more than 10,000 employees, 330 stores, and a Camp Snoopy theme park. With a gross area of 4.8 million square feet, the mall remains the largest in the United States; its roughly 40 million annual visitors equal to around eight times the population of the state of Minnesota. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly reveal how the mall is heated, despite having no central heating system; explain how the modern

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