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PODCAST

Today In History with The Retrospectors

The Retrospectors

Curious, funny, surprising daily history - with Olly Mann, Rebecca Messina and Arion McNicoll. 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! Best Daily Podcast (British Podcast Awards 2023 nominee). Get early access and ad-free listening at Patreon.com/Retrospectors or subscribe on Apple Podcasts.

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All Episodes

11:46

Chuck Berry v the IRS

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/06/11

It was the THIRD time behind bars for legendary rock n’ roller Chuck Berry when he was found to have dodged $110,000 in income tax on 11th June, 1979.He insisted on being paid cash-in-hand for his sometimes shambolic personal appearances, and his propensity for stashing it was so well-known that in Australia the authorities introduced limits on the amount of cash that could be transited across their border, specifically in response to him once stuffing $50,000 in his guitar case. In this episode,

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13:12

Benjamin Franklin's Kite 🪁⚡

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/06/10

Benjamin Franklin’s legendary ‘kite experiment’ supposedly took place on 10th June, 1752, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. According to the traditional account, the future Founding Father flew a kite fitted with a metal key into a storm cloud to prove that it contained electricity, leading to the creation of the lightning rod ⚡Historians, however, point out there is no detailed contemporary record proving that events unfolded exactly as later retellings claimed, and, in fact, Franklin never

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12:32

The Day Nero Died

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/06/09

Nero, the final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, killed himself on 9th June AD 68. Having fled Rome to a suburban villa after being declared a ‘public enemy’ by the Senate, he stabbed himself through the throat. Probably. Within months of his death, rumours began that Nero still lived and would return in glory to reclaim his empire. Instead, the historians of the era - albeit never averse to embellishment to make an artistic point - documented the horrors of his reign, including his forced

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11:08

Who You Gonna Call?

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/06/08

‘Ghostbusters’ opened in US cinemas on 8th June, 1984, quickly becoming the highest-grossing comedy of all time. The brainchild of SNL’s Dan Aykroyd - whose great-grandfather was a 19th-century psychic investigator - the film was pitched and delivered within 13 months. Drawing inspiration from 1930s ghost comedies, the wisecracking ensemble comedy smashed the Hollywood wisdom that big-budget comedies don’t recoup their investment. In this episode, Arion, Olly and Rebecca survey some original

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12:33

When Lovelace Met Babbage

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/06/05

When Lord Byron’s 17 year-old daughter, Ada Lovelace, attended a soirée at the home of academic Charles Babbage on 5th June, 1833, the pair hit it off immediately. He invited her to see his ‘Difference Engine’ - an early mechanical calculator - kicking off a correspondence that lasted throughout her life.Their lively, intellectual correspondence, and Ada's deep understanding of mathematics and science, lead to her championing of Babbage’s ‘Analytical Engine’, a groundbreaking proto personal

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11:41

Crazy Frog v Coldplay

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/06/04

‘The Annoying Thing’ is how the begenitaled amphibian animated by Erik Wernquist was first described; but by the time he released his first single ‘Axel F’ he was universally known as The Crazy Frog, and beat Coldplay’s ‘Speed of Sound’ to UK #1 on 4th June, 2005.The tale of how this possibly could have happened is unique to the early days of the internet - a teenager messing about imitating motorbike noises emailed the sound to some friends, Wernquist stumbled across it and put it in his

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13:34

The Zoot Suit Riots

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/06/03

Los Angeles erupted in racist violence on 3rd June, 1943 in a week of riots that exposed deep tensions in wartime America.California’s Mexican-American “Pachuco” youth had adopted the zoot suit style from African-American jazz culture. But to many white Americans the fashion appeared rebellious, unpatriotic and even threatening at a time when wartime rationing had placed strict controls on fabric use. Groups of sailors started targeting zoot suit-wearing youths in downtown Los Angeles, and mob

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12:08

Who Invented The Telephone?

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/06/02

Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson made an important discovery, by accident, on June 2, 1875. While working on their ‘harmonic telegraph’. Watson inadvertently plucked a reed that had been tightly wound around the pole of its electromagnet, producing a twang that Bell heard on a second device next door. Meanwhile, Elisha Gray, co-founder of Western Electric Company, was working on, as his patent put it, “Transmitting Vocal Sounds Telegraphically.” Gray had been using liquid transmitters in his

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12:00

Nepal's Royal Bloodbath

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/06/01

Crown Prince Dipendra opened fire on his whole family at a family dinner at Kathmandu’s Narayanhiti Palace on 1st June, 2001. He killed nine royals, including his father, King Birendra, his mother, Queen Aishwarya, and his siblings; then reportedly turned the gun on himself. In a bizarre twist of constitutional formality, Dipendra — though in a coma — was then declared King of Nepal for three days. When he died on June 4th, his uncle Gyanendra, who hadn’t been at the dinner, was crowned king. This

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11:58

Recording 'White Christmas'

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/05/29

Bing Crosby recorded the biggest-selling single of all time, ‘White Christmas’, on 29th May, 1942. The session took just 18 minutes, and the song was not considered the standout from the album: everyone thought the Valentine’s-themed ballad ‘Be Careful, It's My Heart’ had a better chance of chart success. The songwriter, Irving Berlin, was perhaps not an obvious person to pen the quintessential American Christmas song, given that he was a Russian-born Jew, who had never celebrated the holiday until

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12:00

Super Mario Bros - The First Videogame Movie

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/05/28

Before ‘Tomb Raider’, before ‘Mortal Kombat’, before ‘Street Fighter’, there was something even WORSE. ‘Super Mario Bros’ - which opened in the United States on 28th May, 1993 - was such a critical and commercial failure that for years afterwards Nintendo kept their franchises out of Hollywood hands.Relocating the action to ‘Dinohattan’, the film inexplicably disregarded most of what had made the videogame such a smash-hit and replaced these elements with allusions to Blade Runner and Tim Burton’s

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13:19

The Prime Minister's Duel

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/05/27

William Pitt the Younger was Prime Minister when he and opposition MP George Tierney fought a duel on Sunday, 27th May 1798 on London’s Putney Heath. Standing twelve paces apart, the two politicians prepared to exchange gunfire. Both men missed with their first shots. On the second round, Pitt deliberately fired away from his opponent, signalling that he considered honour satisfied without bloodshed. The seconds intervened, and the duel ended peacefully. The fight had escalated from an argument

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12:28

When Australia Said Sorry

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/05/26

A coalition of Australian community groups came together on May 26th, 1998 for the country’s first “National Sorry Day”, an annual day of atonement for the social-engineering policy that ripped an estimated 50,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families between 1910 and the 1970s. The first Sorry Day was marked with 300 events around the nation, and more than 1,000 people attended a ceremony in Parliament House, Canberra, but it took Australia’s government another

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13:01

America's Longest Line

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/05/25

Hands Across America, a human chain from New York to California was formed on 25th May, 1986, in an attempt to raise awareness and funds for domestic poverty.The brainchild of advertising executive Jeffrey Nightingale and We Are the World producer Ken Kragen, the kooky concept gained traction once corporate sponsors Coca-Cola and Citibank jumped on board, McDonald’s turned placemats into promotion tools, and popstar Prince sponsored a mile of the chain. The event got a Super Bowl promo starring

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13:03

Jerry Lee Lewis's Child Bride

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/05/22

When Jerry Lee Lewis landed at Heathrow Airport for his first UK tour on 22nd May, 1958, he was met with a flurry of journalists eager for a scoop. Yet just one question brought everything to a halt: "Who are you?". A wide-eyed girl in Lewis's entourage answered: Myra Gale Brown, his wife. But she was only 13 years old. As if this wasn’t scandal enough… she was also his cousin, and their marriage was bigamous. The press exploded with these revelations, turning what was meant to be a triumphant

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11:31

Greyhound Hits The Road

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/05/21

When Carl Wickman started America’s first bus company on 21st May, 1914, they weren’t a bus company, and they weren’t called Greyhound - they were a commuter service for miners in Hibbing, Minnesota.But, despite their ‘dirty dog’ reputation (and the fact they’re now owned by a British conglomerate), the company is still seen as a cornerstone of American culture, and undoubtedly the most famous bus company in the world. In this episode, Olly, Arion and Rebecca consider the role of Hollywood in

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13:09

Make Me Some Levi's

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/05/20

Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a US patent for reinforcing work trousers with copper rivets on 20th May 1873; an innovation that would eventually create the global market for blue jeans.Davis, a Jewish tailor in Nevada, had already been using metal fasteners to strengthen horse blankets and other hard-wearing goods. When a labourer’s wife asked him to make trousers sturdy enough to survive her husband’s punishing work, Davis realised that the weak points were the seams and pockets, and used

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12:12

Fox's 'Glee' Gambit

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/05/19

Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s musical comedy-drama ‘Glee’ was first screened on Fox on May 19th, 2009. In a strategy to whip up excitement before the season premiere in the Autumn, the network showed the pilot in a plum post-‘American Idol’ slot, and then besieged websites and social networks with advertisements over the Summer. The strategy worked - justifying ‘Glee’s enormous budget, relatively unknown cast, and complex musical rights negotiations - and by the end of 2009 the show had generated

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12:24

How Shrek Changed Hollywood

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/05/18

Dreamworks’ irreverent animated comedy Shrek opened in 3,500 U.S. theaters on 18th May, 2001 - dethroning The Mummy Returns with a $42 million opening weekend, and eventually raking in nearly $500 million worldwide.But the journey to swampy superstardom was anything but smooth. The project bounced around for a decade, surviving the death of Chris Farley, the original voice of Shrek, and burning through so many scriptwriters (whose work never saw the light of day) that the animation department

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10:42

The Unkillable King George

Today In History with The Retrospectors ·

2026/05/15

George III narrowly dodged a bullet for the SECOND time in one day on 15th May, 1800, as he attended a performance at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The assassination attempt came from James Hadfield, a clinically insane former soldier, who rose from the pit and fired a pistol at the King, causing uproar in the audience. Despite the danger, George remained composed, even using his opera glasses to survey the disarray. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly reveal how the leading playwright of

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1,342 results

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