PODCAST

Photo of the Day Podcast

Brenda Elthon

A little history. look.substack.com

history

All Episodes

5:54

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/10/03

Praying for victory.On this date in 1789, President George Washington proclaimed November 26 of that year as a national day of thanksgiving.Its purpose, he said, was to acknowledge the ‘care and assistance’ Americans had received from God in achieving independence and establishing a constitutional government.Seventy-four years later, on this date in 1863, President Lincoln followed suit, declaring the last Thursday in November as a national day of Thanksgiving, bringing national uniformity to the

4:13

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/10/02

Letters to FDRAbandoned farms.Shuttered retail stores.Migrant families.“Hooverville” shanty-towns.Bread lines.Riding the rails in search of work.To all of the people swept up in the nation’s downward spiral, Franklin Roosevelt offered a ‘new deal’ when he became president in 1933.And he delivered.Some people were grateful; others were angry.And FDR received letters from both. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

3:28

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/10/01

Baseball and chemical weapons.The large-scale use of chemical weapons began in World War I.Both sides tried tear gas first.But it dispersed quickly and caused only temporary blindness and breathing trouble.Both France and Germany wanted something stronger and lethal.So they began putting chlorine, phosgene and mustard gas into grenades and artillery shells. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

2:06

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/09/30

The people of 1938.With words from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow written one hundred years before.Tell me not, in mournful numbers,Life is but an empty dream!For the soul is dead that slumbers,And things are not what they seem. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

7:26

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/09/28

Reading the paper on September 28, 1944.In the first Allied setback since D-Day, the British effort to seize the Rhine River bridge at Arnhem, in the Netherlands, has failed after a nine-day battle.In a nighttime operation, 2,400 surviving British troops escaped through German lines in small groups and were evacuated.1,200 wounded British men, along with 4,000 dead, were left behind.The Arnhem operation was an attempt to create a northern route into Germany which bypassed the German Siegfried Line

2:53

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/09/27

It is September 27, 1862.Ten days have passed since McClellan’s Union forces defeated Lee’s army at Antietam.McClellan has refused Lincoln’s order to pursue and vanquish Lee’s retreating army.Lincoln believes an opportunity to crush Lee’s forces and end the Civil War in the East has been lost.And the Secretary of the Interior has told Lincoln an astonishing story at a cabinet meeting. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

3:37

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/09/26

It is September 26, 1960.Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy are in a Chicago television studio for their first presidential debate.The moderator, Howard K. Smith, sits at a desk separating the two candidates.More than sixty-six million people are watching on TV.And millions more are listening on radio. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

2:47

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/09/25

A teenage girl writes to Eleanor Roosevelt.“March 1, 1934.“Dear Mrs. Roosevelt,”I'm sorry this had to be written on funny paper.“But honest its very funny to live.“I wished sometimes that I were dead. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

4:21

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/09/24

It is September 25, 1915.A twenty-six-year-old stretcher-bearer with the London Irish Rifles, named Patrick MacGill, is on the march toward Loos, a French city in the north near the Belgian border.The coming battle at Loos — a combined operation with the French — will be the largest British attack of the year.There, the British will use poison gas for the first time and also put new volunteer units into the field.The hope is to break through German defenses and end the stalemate. Get full access to

4:43

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/09/23

The threat from within.It is January 6, 1942.War rages in Europe and Asia.And the American ambivalence about joining the conflict has ended.The surprise Japanese attack on US military installations at Pearl Harbor, Guam and the Philippines shattered the belief that the two oceans would keep the US out of the war.The ‘America First’ committee, which once boasted 800,000 members, has dissolved.Military enlistment has surged.Lines are forming outside recruiting stations, and many are staying open

5:38

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/09/21

Reading the paper on Sept. 21, 1941.Negotiations with Japan on reaching a settlement in Japanese-American relations have hit a ‘virtual stalemate,’ although talks will continue in hopes that an eventual resolution can be reached.Japan has insisted on having a special status in East Asia which would give it rights of control over major Chinese ports and northern provinces.In return, Japan would abandon plans for a push further south and relinquish claims in French Indochina.The US has rejected this

6:59

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/09/20

Europe’s unending wars.It is July 1, 1916.At 7:20 a.m. this morning, British forces detonated an underground mine they had laid beneath a German army fortification in northeastern France known as the Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt.A cloud of smoke and soil rose from the hill and filled the air.Stones showered down on the surrounding hillside, covering it in fragments of chalky bedrock.And a crater, fifty yards in diameter and sixty feet deep, opened up in the midst of the German defensive line.The mine was

3:19

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/09/19

‘Reckless utterances on the stump.’It is December 3, 1901.The new president, Theodore Roosevelt, has sent his written Annual Message, now called the State of the Union, to the Congress.Roosevelt has been in office less than three months — since September 14 — the day on which his predecessor, William McKinley, succumbed to an infection caused by an assassin’s bullets. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

5:09

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/09/18

Opportunity cost.It is September 18, 1862.A day of great American sadness.Thousands of dead and wounded Americans lay on farm fields in southern Maryland.The day before, McClellan’s Army of the Potomac and Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, had met in battle along southern Maryland’s Antietam Creek.Total casualties exceeded 23,000. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

4:49

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/09/17

‘I was lucky.’Survivors of a tragedy often say it was little things breaking their way which made all the difference.Like Howard Lutnick, whose firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, had offices in the World Trade Center.While more than half of his employees were killed on 9/11, he survived.He was taking his son to his first day of kindergarten when the plane struck the North Tower.Or New York financier J.P. Morgan.He decided to stay a bit longer in Europe and canceled his reservations on the Titanic just days

5:45

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/09/16

To live in a difficult time.Albert Einstein wrote a reflective essay in 1931 in which he explained his life philosophy.“How strange is the lot of us mortals!“Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it.“But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people—first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, Get full access to Photo of the Day at

6:12

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/09/14

Reading the paper on Sept. 14, 1940.The Luftwaffe mounted its heaviest bombing raid over Britain to date, striking Buckingham Palace, Downing Street, Whitehall and the House of Lords in an overnight raid which lasted more than eight hours.The bombing reflects a new Nazi policy, instituted a week ago, which will result in the bombing of London for 56 of the following 57 days and nights.The Duke of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII, sent a telegram to his brother, King George VI, from the Bahamas

5:46

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/09/13

Goodbye to the buffalo.It is the late 1860s.The Civil War is over, and veterans are readjusting to civilian life.The transcontinental railroad is under construction, as work crews of Irish immigrants, laying track from the East, race to meet crews of Chinese laborers who lay track from the West.Millions of buffalo [whose scientific name is the “American Bison”] roam in grasslands stretching from the Appalachians to the Rocky Mountains, and from parts of Canada south into Mexico.Conflict between

4:49

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/09/13

What really happened?It is the morning of September 13, 1862.Barton Mitchell, a forty-five-year-old former railroad worker, is making coffee over a campfire.He serves as a corporal in the 27th Indiana Volunteer Infantry.And he’s encamped with the others in a meadow which a Confederate general’s staff had occupied the day before.Barton notices something in the grass. Get full access to Photo of the Day at look.substack.com/subscribe

2:47

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day Podcast ·

2024/09/11

A friend has lost his son.It is March 19, 1935, and Ernest Hemingway is making his second attempt to write a condolence letter to his friends, a married couple, who have lost their sixteen-year-old son after a long struggle with tuberculosis.The letter reflects on death coming to a young person, a specter which Hemingway had witnessed on the battlefields of Europe in the waning days of World War I.And it offers a prescription for the old, who look among friends and know that death could soon claim

497 results

Photo of the Day Podcast

All Episodes

Similar Podcasts

The Old Front Line

Paul Reed

Today In History with The Retrospectors

The Retrospectors

جنود خلدهم التاريخ

ALSUMOOD PODCAST

Film History - Daily

Inception Point Ai

Madonna - Biography Flash

Inception Point Ai