bsnsHistory

12:29

July 7, 1981: The First Woman on the Court

bsnsHistory ·

2026/07/07

Some turning points arrive with fanfare. This one arrived with a confirmation vote of 99 to nothing.On July 7, 1981, President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor to the United States Supreme Court, making her the first woman in the Court's 191-year history to be seated as a justice. O'Connor had graduated third in her class at Stanford Law School and still could not get a single law firm to hire her as a lawyer, building her career through public service instead before her appointment to

en

14:21

July 6, 1944: When the Tent Came Down

bsnsHistory ·

2026/07/06

Before television and the internet, the circus coming to town was one of the biggest live events a community would see all year.On July 6, 1944, roughly seven thousand people packed into the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus big top in Hartford, Connecticut for an afternoon matinee. A small flame near the sidewall spread through the waterproofed canvas in minutes, and the fire killed 167 people and injured more than 700. The disaster is listed by the U.S. Fire Administration alongside the

en

21:30

Business Blooper: New Coke: The Blunder That Was...

bsnsHistory ·

2026/07/03

Some business mistakes are famous. This one is famous and still unresolved forty years later.On April 23, 1985, The Coca-Cola Company announced it was replacing its 99-year-old formula with a sweeter, reformulated version that had beaten both original Coke and Pepsi in nearly 200,000 blind taste tests. The public reaction was immediate and volcanic. Complaint calls flooded Coca-Cola's Atlanta headquarters at 8,000 per day. Forty thousand letters arrived. Cases of original Coke were hoarded and sold

en

13:36

July 2, 1962: Small Town, Big Idea

bsnsHistory ·

2026/07/02

Some business ideas get rejected because they are bad. Some get rejected because the people doing the rejecting cannot see past the model they are already running.On July 2, 1962, Sam Walton opened the first Wal-Mart Discount City in Rogers, Arkansas, a town of fewer than 6,000 people, after Ben Franklin's corporate leadership turned down his proposal to build large discount stores in rural communities. More than 500 customers were waiting before the doors opened. Customers drove in from forty miles

en

15:29

July 1, 1963: Five Digits That Moved Everything

bsnsHistory ·

2026/07/01

It started as a solution to a mail sorting crisis and became one of the most widely used data points in American commerce.On July 1, 1963, the United States Post Office Department launched the ZIP code, a five-digit Zone Improvement Plan developed from a proposal that postal inspector Robert Moon had first submitted in 1944 and been turned down on twice before receiving approval. Mail volume had doubled between 1943 and 1962 to sixty-six billion pieces a year, and the existing system of handwritten

en

15:56

June 30, 1892: Carnegie's Other Legacy

bsnsHistory ·

2026/06/30

Show Notes: On June 30, 1892, Carnegie Steel locked out its workers at the Homestead Steel Works before their contract had even expired.Six days later, three hundred Pinkerton agents arrived on barges on the Monongahela River. Ten people died. The union was crushed for forty-six years. Carnegie was in Scotland when it happened, having left his chairman Henry Clay Frick with instructions that amounted to approval of anything he did. Carnegie's profits rose $106 million in the nine years that

en

14:09

June 29, 2007: A Phone That Killed Several Industries...

bsnsHistory ·

2026/06/29

On June 29, 2007, Apple released the first iPhone to people who had been camping outside stores for days.Nokia controlled 51 percent of the global phone market. BlackBerry's co-CEO said it would be fine. Microsoft's CEO said it had no chance. Within five years all three were in serious trouble. The iPhone didn't just create a new product category. It made the preconditions for several existing industries obsolete, one quiet Saturday morning at a time.From bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the

en

11:49

bsnsBlooper: Wait. Toothpaste Flavored Lasagna or...

bsnsHistory ·

2026/06/26

The brand meant something customers wouldn’t let go of.In the 1960s, Colgate-Palmolive explored expanding beyond oral care into food products, testing items like prepared meals in limited markets. On paper, the move extended an established brand into a new category, but in practice, consumers reacted immediately against it. The association with toothpaste was too strong, making it difficult for buyers to separate the brand from its core identity when considering food. The idea never gained traction,

en

13:38

June 25, 1950: A Sunday Morning That Started the...

bsnsHistory ·

2026/06/25

On June 25, 1950, North Korean tanks crossed the 38th parallel at 4:40 in the morning, and the Cold War turned hot for the first time.What followed nearly quadrupled the US defense budget, accidentally provided the procurement dollars that rebuilt Japan into an industrial powerhouse, and divided a peninsula into the world's most dramatic unintentional economic experiment. The armistice signed in 1953 ended the fighting but not the war. The difference between what North and South Korea built since

en

14:31

June 24, 1717: Secrecy, Symbolism, and a Social...

bsnsHistory ·

2026/06/24

On June 24, 1717, four London lodges founded the first Grand Lodge of England at the Goose and Gridiron tavern, and modern Freemasonry was born.What they built wasn't primarily a secret society. It was a trust network that let merchants, lawyers, and intellectuals find each other across borders and do business in an era before credit ratings or corporate law existed. Within a generation it had spread across Europe and the American colonies and become the connective tissue of the American

en

13:10

June 23, 2016: Britain Votes Itself Out

bsnsHistory ·

2026/06/23

On June 23, 2016, 51.9 percent of British voters chose to leave the European Union in a referendum that was legally advisory and politically irreversible.The betting markets had put the odds of Leave winning at thirty percent. The prime minister who called the vote resigned the morning after. The immediate market panic was shorter-lived than predicted. The structural damage that followed was worse than the models calculated. A decade later economists estimate Brexit reduced UK GDP by 6 to 8 percent

en

12:37

bsnsBloopers: They Built the Perfect Car… for Nobody

bsnsHistory ·

2026/06/19

Research pointed one way, but customers moved another.On September 4, 1957, Ford Motor Company introduced the Edsel, a new brand positioned to capture a growing middle segment of the car market. Backed by extensive research and a major financial investment, the launch was meant to fill a perceived gap between existing models. Instead, confusing branding, inconsistent design choices, and shifting consumer preferences led to weak demand, with buyers unsure where the car fit. Within two years, the

en

12:43

June 18, 1948: The Record That Changed What Music...

bsnsHistory ·

2026/06/18

On June 18, 1948, Columbia Records introduced the LP record at a press conference in New York, and the album era of popular music began.The 33 1/3 rpm vinyl disc held twenty-three minutes per side, compared to four minutes on the standard format it replaced. What followed was a format war with RCA Victor, fifty years of music built around the album as an artistic statement, and a vinyl revival that outlasted the CD that was supposed to kill it.From bsnsHistory, the daily podcast about the moments

en

12:29

June 17, 1885: The Gift That Arrived in Pieces

bsnsHistory ·

2026/06/17

On June 17, 1885, the French ship Isère sailed into New York Harbor carrying the Statue of Liberty in 214 crates with nowhere to stand.Congress had refused to fund the pedestal. The millionaires had passed. What happened next was Joseph Pulitzer asking ordinary people to send whatever they had, promising to print every name regardless of the amount. 120,000 people responded, most with less than a dollar. The mechanism Pulitzer proved that summer became the template for every mass fundraising

en

14:17

June 16, 1930: The Name Above the Door

bsnsHistory ·

2026/06/16

In the mid-1990s, the smell hit you before you were through the door. The music was louder than it needed to be, the lighting darker than any retailer had a practical reason to use, and the oversized black and white photographs in the windows stopped people mid-stride in malls across America.Most of them had no idea the name above the door belonged to a man who had died on a yacht off Santa Barbara sixty years earlier, having spent three decades building a store that outfitted Theodore Roosevelt for

en

12:07

June 15, 1844: The Man Who Invented Everything Rubber...

bsnsHistory ·

2026/06/15

On June 3, 2025, three Goodyear Blimps flew over Akron, Ohio simultaneously to celebrate one hundred years of one of the most recognized brand names in the world.The man that name belongs to died in a New York hotel room in 1860 owing $200,000, never worked for the company, and had been dead for thirty-eight years when it was founded. Charles Goodyear discovered vulcanization by accident on a hot stove in 1839, spent five years perfecting the process, and received United States Patent number 3,633

en

10:35

bsnsBlooper: Grab the Wrong Tape and you’ll be...

bsnsHistory ·

2026/06/12

The better product didn’t matter once the ecosystem moved the other way.On June 12, 1975, Sony introduced the Betamax home video format, entering a market that would soon evolve into a full-scale format war with VHS. While Betamax delivered strong technical performance, competitors built broader partnerships, licensed their technology more widely, and expanded the available content library faster. As consumers chose based on what they could watch rather than what performed best, the balance shifted

en

13:58

June 11, 1982: The Movie Columbia Passed On That...

bsnsHistory ·

2026/06/11

Not every mistake announces itself.On June 11, 1982, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial opened in theaters across America and began its run toward becoming the highest-grossing film in history. Columbia Pictures had already passed on it, calling it a wimpy Disney movie, but kept five percent of the net profits in the turnaround deal, making E.T. their most profitable film of the year despite never producing it.Mars declined a candy placement deal to protect their brand from an alien movie, and watched

en

14:00

June 10, 1940: The Man Who Built Black Enterprise and...

bsnsHistory ·

2026/06/10

In January 2025, a United States president signed a posthumous pardon for a man who had been dead for eighty-five years.That act of official acknowledgment is where this story begins, before traveling back to a London flat in the winter of 1940, where Marcus Garvey lay paralyzed by stroke, reading his own premature obituary in a newspaper.Garvey had built the largest Black mass organization in American history, founded the Black Star Line shipping company capitalized by working people at five

en

13:13

June 9, 1973: Secretariat and the Economics of an...

bsnsHistory ·

2026/06/09

Some stories are really about the numbers.On June 9, 1973, Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths in a world record time of 2 minutes and 24 seconds that has never been broken. But the business story that surrounds that afternoon is just as remarkable as the race itself.Penny Chenery had syndicated the horse for $6.08 million in January, selling 32 breeding shares before he had run a single race at three, to pay an estate tax bill that might otherwise have forced her to sell him

en

All Episodes

Similar Podcasts

Today In History with The Retrospectors

The Retrospectors

pplpod

pplpod

The Old Front Line

Paul Reed

This Day in Disney History

ATIS Products

Blues Moments in Time...

The Blues Hotel Collective