Today In History with 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.
Episodes
July 31, 2025 • 11 mins
Andre and Edouard Michelin published their first Guide on 1st August, 1900. Now recognised as the gold standard in luxury restaurant reviews, the original guide was primarily created to encourage demand for automobiles - and, therefore, Michelin tyres. At the time, there were fewer than 3,000 cars on French roads.
Nearly 35,000 copies of this first, free edition of the guide were distributed, providing information to motorists in...
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July 30, 2025 • 12 mins
The Royal Navy were issued with their final daily ration of rum - ending a tradition of more than 300 years - on July 31, 1970. The day became known as ‘Black Tot Day’.
The demise of the long-standing tradition was mainly due to safety concerns, following fears surrounding the more complex technology now in operation across the Navy. To show their disappointment, some sailors wore black armbands.
In this episode, Arion, Rebecca a...
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July 29, 2025 • 11 mins
Union boss Jimmy Hoffa left his Michigan home for what was supposed to be a peace summit with mobsters Anthony Provenzano and Anthony Giacalone on 30th July, 1975. He never returned home.
But Hoffa was much more than just a Mafia stooge. He’d been involved in labour unions from the age of fourteen, rapidly rising through the ranks to become president of the powerful Teamsters Union by 1957. Under his leadership, the union balloone...
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July 28, 2025 • 11 mins
Robert Paden-Powell took twenty boys to Brownsea Island, Poole on 29th July, 1907, to embark on a ten-day camp. The trip was, essentially, a laboratory for his subsequent books - and, therefore, the global Boy Scout movement.
Each day started with cocoa and exercises, and ended with campfire yarns. In between, there was a lot of knot-tying, parading and praying. By the time of the Second World War, 3.3 million British children we...
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July 27, 2025 • 12 mins
Captain William Smith, a decorated World War II pilot, was flying a B-25 Mitchell bomber on a routine mission on 28th July, 1945. In heavy fog over New York, he got disoriented and tragically turned the wrong way, narrowly missing the Chrysler Building - before crashing into the Empire State Building.
Elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver, was thrown from her lift, but miraculously survived. First responders, unaware of the damaged...
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July 24, 2025 • 11 mins
The Hovercraft SR-N1, piloted by Captain Peter Lamb, sailed from Calais to Dover on 25th July 1959, fifty years to the day after Louis Blériot made the first crossing of the English Channel. It took 2 hours, 3 minutes.
The brainchild of British engineer and inventor Christopher Cockerell, Hovercraft was described as a cross between an aircraft, a boat and a land vehicle, hovering just above the water on a cushion of air. Ultimate...
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July 23, 2025 • 13 mins
The ‘Quietly Confident Quartet’ of Mark Tonelli (backstroke), Peter Evans (breaststroke), Mark Kerry (butterfly), and Neil Brooks (freestyle) won Gold in the 4 × 100 metres medley relay at the Summer Olympics in Moscow on 24th July, 1980: the only time the United States had not won the event.
It was Australia’s first Gold medal for eight years, but reaction back home to the swimmers’ astonishing victory was mixed, because some of ...
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July 22, 2025 • 11 mins
Margaret "Mother" Clap stood before a London court on 23rd July, 1726, accused of running a “Molly house” - a social club for gay men that was part-brothel, part-safe haven.
She argued, perhaps naively, that as a woman she couldn’t possibly be involved in such "unnatural" practices, but the jury was unconvinced: she was fined, sentenced to two years in prison, and subjected to public humiliation on the pillory, where the crowd’s ...
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July 21, 2025 • 11 mins
Billed as a concours for ‘horseless carriages’, the Paris–Rouen competition which took place on 22nd July, 1894, is now widely considered the world’s first motor race.
Only 21 vehicles qualified. Some of them had solid iron tyres. One was an eight passenger wagonette that weighed four tonnes. The car that came in first - a 20 horsepower steam tractor - was ruled ineligible.
In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly consider the w...
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July 20, 2025 • 11 mins
New York City's iconic green space, Central Park - larger than Monaco and Vatican City combined - was legislated for on 21st July, 1853. Over 750 acres of Manhattan were allocated for America's first major landscaped public park; a grand plan which aimed to rival European cities.
Rocky and swampy land, previously home to small farms and settlements, was bulldozed - at a cost that exceeded the purchase of Alaska. A competition prod...
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July 17, 2025 • 10 mins
Tim Berners-Lee uploaded a photo of parody doo-wop group Les Horrible Cernettes on 18th July 1992 - the first image to be shared online.
The photograph was taken at the CERN Hardronic Festival by Silvano de Gennaro, an analyst in the Computer Science department. The girlband were striking a pose for their forthcoming CD cover, little realising their comedy love songs about colliders, quarks, liquid nitrogen, microwaves, and antima...
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July 16, 2025 • 11 mins
Windsor became the official surname of the British Royal family on 17th July 1917, when King George V issued a proclamation declaring that “The Name of Windsor is to be borne by His Royal House and Family and Relinquishing the Use of All German Titles and Dignities.”
The decision to change the family name came amid strong anti-German feeling following air raids over London, and in particular the bombing of a school in the East End...
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July 15, 2025 • 13 mins
John F. Kennedy Jr., son of JFK and Jackie Onassis, disappeared off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard on July 16th, 1999. He had crashed his private plane, killing his wife, his sister-in-law and himself.
President Bill Clinton called it “a very sad time,” and for good reason — it was déjà vu for America. The Kennedy legacy was playing out once more, not with gunshots in Dallas or Los Angeles, but in slow, quiet dread over a radar bl...
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July 14, 2025 • 11 mins
The first images of Mars found their way back to Earth from NASA’s Mariner 4 mission on 15th July, 1965 - and were simultaneously revelatory and disappointing.
Delivered as binary code, rendered in black and white, and revealing only 1% of the planet, the photos were coloured in by hand and showed no evidence of life. But they played a significant part in the scientific understanding of the Red Planet for years to come.
In this e...
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July 13, 2025 • 12 mins
Cold-blooded killer? Folk hero? Petty thief? Billy The Kid, who met his end on 14th July, 1881, was all of the above. His luck finally ran out in a dark bedroom in New Mexico, where his old friend, Sheriff Pat Garrett, ensured that he would be the one to live to tell the tale.
Born Henry McCarty but also known by numerous aliases like William H. Bonny and Kid Antrim, ‘The Kid’ was just 21 when he died, having killed at least four ...
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July 10, 2025 • 12 mins
Mary Whitehouse successfully sued Gay News and publisher Denis Lemon at the Old Bailey in a trial that began on 11th July, 1977 - Britain’s last conviction for blasphemy.
What had ired the notorious Christian campaigner was the magazine’s publication of “The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name”, a poem by James Kirkup written from the perspective of a Roman centurion who graphically describes having sex with Jesus after his crucifix...
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July 9, 2025 • 12 mins
The ‘Abernathy Boys’, Temple and Louis, were aged just 5 and 8 respectively when they departed Guthrie, Oklahoma for a 1,300-mile horseback trip to Roswell, New Mexico on July 10th, 1909. Alone.
Sons of widower John Abernathy, himself the youngest-ever U.S. Marshal, the boys encountered wolves, outlaws and vast stretches of untamed plains on their journey - but survived the trip and became national celebrities and friends with Ted...
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July 8, 2025 • 13 mins
Rock Around The Clock was a moderately successful B-side - until its inclusion in the teen rebellion movie Blackboard Jungle - following which, on 9th July, 1955, Bill Haley and the Comets’ earworm became the first rock n’roll song to hit US No.1.
But Haley was no teenage rebel. He was already in his late 30s, balding, and rocking a curl on his forehead that screamed “respectable uncle”. But he was smart. He had rebranded his coun...
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July 8, 2025 • 11 mins
‘Our Lady of Kazan’, a painting of the Virgin and Child, was discovered in the ashes of a fire in the Russian town of Kazan on 8th July, 1579. The icon quickly became associated with miracles after two blind men were said to have their sight restored by standing in front of it.
The original was stolen in 1904, but the copies still represent one of Russia’s most important pieces of religious art - credited by some with thwarting Na...
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July 6, 2025 • 11 mins
Samantha Smith, an 11 year-old from Maine, New England, left for the USSR on 7th July, 1983, as the personal guest of Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov.
Her adventure began with a letter she wrote him, bluntly asking if he intended to start a war or conquer the United States. After the letter was published in Pravda, Andropov invited her to visit Russia, attending the Bolshoi Ballet, touring Lenin's Tomb, and staying at the Artek summ...
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