HISTORY This Week

February 23, 2005. New York City's culinary elite gather at Gotham Hall. Tuxedoed waiters pass around champagne flutes and decadent hors d'oeuvres, as famous chefs like Eric Ripert and Anthony Bourdain pose for photos and gossip with their peers before the night’s main event: an announcement that could change their lives and the fate of America's dining scene.

Édouard Michelin takes the stage. His company, Michelin, is one of the world's largest manufacturers of tires, but they also produce a restaurant guide that has dictated the fortunes of European restaurants for over 100 years. Now, the Michelin Guide, and its coveted stars, will be coming to America.

When Michelin descends on New York City, which restaurants win? Which lose? And how does the battle itself transform American food culture?

Special thanks to Peter Esmond, the former general manager of Per Se and current sales leader at DoorDash; Eric Ripert, chef of Le Bernardin in New York City; and Kathleen Squires, a food and travel writer whose work appears in the Wall Street Journal, Conde Nast Traveler and more.

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February 15, 1935. The American Medical Association, the AMA, is holding an emergency meeting in Chicago. The crisis? The possibility that the federal government is about to pass universal health insurance.

Health insurance is a new concept in America at this time, but President Franklin Roosevelt's administration is looking to include it in a package that will include another piece of new legislation - Social Security. The AMA, which represents thousands of American doctors, fears that government-backed insurance could dictate how doctors care for patients, and how much money they're allowed to make. The AMA's resistance is the beginning of a nearly 20-year battle against this initiative.

How does the AMA eventually use never-before-seen tactics to fight against a national healthcare program? And how is that program ultimately defeated?

Special thanks to Marcella Alsan, Angelopoulos Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a Professor of Public Health at the Chan School of Public Health at Harvard. Her working paper on this topic is titled, Why Doesn’t the United States Have National Health Insurance? The Role of the American Medical Association.

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February 11, 2005. FBI agents bust down the door of a cinder block house near the University of Kentucky campus. Amid flash grenades and screaming teens, they arrest three students – plus a fourth student in a nearby dorm. The crime? Stealing almost $750,000 of rare books and manuscripts from the library at Transylvania University. Why did four freshmen decide to actually go through with their real life version of Ocean’s Eleven? And how did they plan to get away with it?

Special thanks to our guests, BJ Gooch, retired special collections librarian; Eric Borsuk, whose memoir is called American Animals: A True Crime Memoir; and Tom Lecky, rare book and manuscript specialist.

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** This episode originally aired February 6, 2023.

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January 28, 1986. It's freezing in Central Florida, a historically cold day. That's bad news for citrus growers, and for NASA, which is scheduled to launch the Space Shuttle Challenger from Cape Canaveral this morning.

Engineers have ben cautioning NASA that cold temperatures can make space launches dangerous. And yet, NASA decides to move ahead. They consider it an "acceptable risk" and send seven astronauts hurtling into the sky.

What went wrong with the Space Shuttle Challenger? And if engineers knew what could happen, why wasn’t this disaster avoided?

Special thanks to Adam Higginbotham, author of Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space.

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To further celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we're re-releasing our classic episode about the Children's Crusade, an effort to bring the youth of Birmingham, Alabama into the Civil Rights Movement in order to affect change across the country.

April 20, 1963. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. walks out of Alabama’s Birmingham Jail after being held for a week for peacefully protesting. He spent most of that time writing a letter that passionately defends the civil rights movement’s nonviolent tactics. But despite King’s passion, the movement’s progress has stalled. King needs a major victory in Birmingham, but he’s running out of people willing to risk their livelihoods and safety for this cause. So a new tactic starts taking shape: recruiting young people to protest. After all, kids have the least to lose and the most to gain from a more equal future. But King says the risk is too high. So what changes his mind about putting kids on the front lines? And how did the Children’s March shift Americans’ support of civil rights?

Special thanks to our guests: Children’s Crusade participants Jessie Shepherd, Janice Wesley Kelsey, and Charles Avery. And Ahmad Ward, former head of education at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and current Executive Director at Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park.

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** This episode originally aired April 17, 2023.

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January 15, 1969. It's been less than a year since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Friends, family, and followers are gathered at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Dr. King preached. They are there to remember him on his birthday, honor his legacy, and present a goal: an official celebration of his birthday every year, a holiday to commemorate his life and his struggle.

Getting a holiday passed may sound like a bureaucratic formality, but it would become a years-long battle, mainly led by his widow, Coretta Scott King. And without an assist from a musical legend, it may have never come to be.

Why was this holiday so controversial? And how did a still-popular song change the tide in this battle?

Special thanks to Kevin Gaines, Julian Bond Professor of Civil Rights and Social Justice at the University of Virginia; and Crystal Sanders, historian and associate professor of African American studies at Emory University.

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January 15, 1939. It's finally working! After countless mechanical issues, the first operational ski lift in the state of Utah is taking people up the mountain so they can glide down its slopes. Skiing conditions are ideal in the town of Alta, and this lift will allow this relatively new sport to explode in popularity. But as beautiful as Alta is, there's also a looming threat... avalanches.

Alta is in one of the most avalanche-prone areas in the entire country. It used to be a small mining town, and its residents have been dealing with avalanches for years, mourning their dead and rebuilding again and again. But now, with Alta becoming a haven for skiing, drastic measures will be needed to keep thousands of visitors safe.

How did the Alta Ski Area become the testing ground for all things avalanche control? And how did rangers find their answer to the avalanche in a deadly weapon of war?

Special thanks to Craig Gordon, avalanche forecaster with the U.S. Forest Service’s Utah Avalanche Center; Andrea Huskinson, former Alta Ski Area communication manager; and Jonathan Morgan, assistant director of the Alta Avalanche Program.

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January 8, 1964. In his State of the Union address, Lyndon Johnson unveils his War on Poverty, an effort to tackle subpar living conditions and create jobs across the United States. Johnson discovers that declaring war—even one on an idea—always comes with great costs. Why did LBJ pick poverty as one of his major initiatives? And what is the legacy of the war he started?

Special thanks to Doris Kearns Goodwin, historian and author of Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream; and Guian McKee, professor of public affairs at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

**This episode originally aired on January 1, 2021.

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New Year's Eve, 1958. Cuba's president, Fulgencio Batista, is throwing his annual New Year's Eve party at his home in Havana. It's usually a blowout. But this year, the vibes... aren't so great. 

Government officials and Cuban elites drink champagne and pick at arroz con pollo as the clock ticks closer to midnight. But there's a palpable anxiety in the air. They aren't just counting down to the end of the year - they may be counting down the final minutes of Cuba as they know it. A revolution is underway, and rebel forces, led by a young Fidel Castro, have taken city after city throughout 1958. As the year comes to a close, Havana – the last stronghold of Batista's government – is in their crosshairs. 

How did the country revolt against a ruthless dictator? And what happened in the final weeks of 1958 that brought down Batista's government and ushered in a new Cuba?

Special thanks to Lillian Guerra, professor of Cuban and Caribbean history at the University of Florida and author of Heroes, Martyrs, and Political Messiahs in Revolutionary Cuba; and Julia Sweig, author of Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know.

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Christmas Eve, 1913. For months, newspapers have been trumpeting an urgent message: Do your Christmas shopping early. It would be easy to assume this was the work of greedy department stores and slick ad companies. But it wasn’t – at least not at first. It started as the rallying cry of a labor reformer who was striving to improve the lives of retail workers. Ever since, Americans have been wrestling over the values at the heart of holiday shopping. But even the most earnest efforts at reform have backfired, time and again. How did Christmas gifts become a thing in the first place? And what were some of the spirited attempts to make the holiday shopping season merry for all?

Special thanks to our guests: Jennifer Le Zotte, professor of history and material culture at the University of North Carolina - Wilmington; Ellen Litwicki, professor emerita at the State University of New York at Fredonia; and Paul Ringel, professor of history at High Point University and author of Commercializing Childhood.

This episode originally aired on December 19th, 2022.

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**For this HTW special feature, Sally interviews director Robert Eggers about his new historically inspired film, Nosferatu.**

Winter, 1476. Vlad III is a prince in Wallachia, in present-day Romania. He is a violent man, so violent that he earns the nickname "Vlad the Impaler." He also has another name that he inherited from his father: Dracula.

Dracula is constantly fighting for his crown, but today, that fight will come to an end. His headless body will be discovered in a marsh, stuck down by his enemies. But his legend will live on.

Dracula pops up in stories throughout Europe over the next few centuries, until author Bram Stoker decides to combine this legend with the latest fictional craze, vampires. His book, Dracula, becomes the king of the genre. It inspires numerous adaptations, including a silent film called Nosferatu. It's considered one of the most important horror movies in history.

Over 100 years later, director Robert Eggers has reimagined the original Nosferatu and adapted it for a modern audience. In a conversation with Eggers, we asked, how did he make a blood-sucking monster feel like a historical figure? And where do vampires fit into our lives today?

Special thanks to Robert Eggers, director of Nosferatu. We also used a great book to help research this episode, Dracula: Prince of Many Faces, by Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally.

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December 21, 1970. Elvis has entered the building. And today, that building is the White House. He's brought a gift for President Nixon, a framed Colt .45 pistol, which White House security won't be thrilled with. But he isn't just there to drop off a Christmas present.

Elvis Presley has lived many lives in his brief 35 years that a child might dream of: he got to be a musician, a soldier, a movie star, the "King of Rock and Roll." And now he might be just a handshake away from his next dream... becoming a federal agent.

What's going on in Elvis Presley's chaotic life that leads him to seek this meeting with Richard Nixon? And when they come face-to-face, does Elvis get what he came for?

Special thanks to our guest, Jon Lowy, author of Elvis and Nixon and founder and president of Global Action on Gun Violence.

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December 11, 1934. Bill Wilson is on the subway, working his way through his third beer, heading to Towns Hospital. He isn’t injured, and he isn’t what would be traditionally classified as “sick.” But he knows he has a problem. And he needs help.

What he doesn't know as he arrives at the hospital – with a fourth bottle of beer in his hand – is that this will be the last sip of alcohol of his life. And when he's discharged from Towns, he won't be returning. Instead, he'll go on to start the most successful alcohol treatment program in history.

How did Bill W. finally kick his addiction to alcohol? And how did his journey toward sobriety lead to the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous?

Special thanks to Bill Schaberg, author of Writing the Big Book: The Creation of AA.

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December 1, 1969. Millions across America are tuned in to the same TV broadcast. They see a bland stage with some government workers behind desks. But there's also a large, plastic container filled with small blue capsules. In each of these capsules, a birth date. The order in which they're chosen will determine who is eligible to be sent off to fight in the Vietnam War. This is the draft lottery, an attempt by the Nixon administration to make the selective service process seem more fair, and restore some trust between the U.S. government and its people. It does not work.

Today, public trust and the Vietnam War. How did this conflict, the first televised war, permanently alter the kind of faith that American citizens put into their leaders? And as a country, have we really ever recovered?

Special thanks to Chris Appy, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the director of the Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy; and Wes Abney, author of Random Destiny: How the Vietnam War Draft Lottery Shaped a Generation.

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For this Thanksgiving, we're re-airing an HTW classic. This episode originally premiered November 23, 2020.

November 24, 1966. Millions of spectators flood Broadway in New York City to watch the Macy’s Day Parade on Thanksgiving morning. The iconic floats – Superman, Popeye, Smokey the Bear – are set against a grey sky that can only be described as noxious. A smog of pollutants is trapped over New York City, and it will ultimately kill nearly 200 people. How did the 1966 Thanksgiving Smog help usher in a new era of environmental protection? And how have we been thinking about environmental disasters all wrong?

Special thanks to our guest Professor Frank Uekotter, author of The Age of Smoke.

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November 26, 1970. In Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival, protestors gather under a statue of Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader who had made peace with the Pilgrims, and partook in the legendary Thanksgiving meal. This protest was organized by Wamsutta Frank James, a Wampanoag activist who wanted to draw attention to the full story of Thanksgiving – a story of fear, violence, and oppression that spanned generations.

America’s reckoning with the truth of Thanksgiving, James argued, would empower indigenous people to fight for their equal rights. This protest – a National Day of Mourning – continues to this day, now led by James’s granddaughter. So what is the true story of Thanksgiving? And why is it so important for us to remember?

Special thanks to Kisha James, Paula Peters, and David Silverman, author of This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving.

This episode originally aired November 22, 2021.

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November 18, 2022. New York City is at war... with rats. And today, Mayor Eric Adams is set to announce four new pieces of legislation aimed at combating this scurrying problem.

Two of these laws will target garbage, the rats' main source of food. If you put trash in places the rats can't get, their population will plummet, and New York will get a major victory in this long-running war.

The garbage problem is nothing new for the city. In fact, it's been an issue since its founding almost 400 years ago. Today, we try to understand, how has New York historically tackled its trash? And when did the city become a shining example of sanitation for the entire world?

Special thanks to our guest, Robin Nagle, anthropologist-in-residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation and a clinical professor at NYU's School of Liberal Studies. Her book is Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City.

“Mayor Eric Adams Signs Rodent-Related Bills: Intros. 414-A, 442-A, 459-A, and 460-A” by NYC Mayor's Office is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

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November 14, 332 BCE. Alexander the Great has conquered an unprecedented amount of territory in a relatively short amount of time. At just 24 years old, he's in control of Macedonia, much of Greece, and now, a huge part of Egypt.

But Alexander doesn't want to just conquer each of these places - he wants to rule. And in a rare move for Macedonian royalty, he wants to rule in a way that honors local customs, allowing him to be seen as not just a king, but in some areas, as some kind of divine figure. So today, the ancient Egyptians will crown Alexander as a pharaoh.

This is one in a long line of victories for Alexander the Great. However, in his often-overlooked later years, his luck starts to change. As Alexander continues his quest to reach the end of the known world, and his ambition reaches mythical heights, how will his unparalleled success come to an end?

Special thanks to Rachel Kousser, professor of Greek and Roman Art and Archaeology at the City University of New York and author of Alexander at the End of the World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great.

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November 4, 2009. It's Game 6 of the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies. The Yankees will clinch the series tonight on the back of one player, Hideki Matsui. He's a baseball player from Japan, one of the few who made the jump across the Pacific to play in America.

In the last 15 years, many more Japanese players have made that move, including superstar Shohei Ohtani, arguably the most popular baseball player in the world today. But before Ohtani, before Matsui, there was Masanori Murakami, the first Japanese player to appear in MLB.

How did Murakami go from a village outside of Tokyo to pitching in front of tens of thousands in America? And how did an international incident cut his U.S. career short, leading to a 30-year gap before the next Japanese player would arrive in the Major Leagues?

Special thanks to Rob Fitts, author of Mashi: The Unfulfilled Baseball Dreams of Masanori Murakami, the First Japanese Major Leaguer; Kerry Yo Nakagawa, founder and director of the Nisei Baseball Research Project; and Michael Clair, writer and senior manager for storytelling and special projects at Major League Baseball. You can hear him on MLB Morning Lineup, the league’s daily podcast.

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Oct 27, 1972. The planet Mars has many victims. Specifically, spacecraft. There have been so many failed missions to Mars, that scientists are rumbling about a "Mars Curse". But one mission is defying the odds.

Mariner 9, an American space probe, has been orbiting Mars for the last year. But now, it's running out of fuel and will be deactivated, having met all of its mission objectives. Mariner 9 gave us our closest look ever at the Red Planet, solving mysteries that have been debated for centuries.

Today, humanity's relationship with Mars. How did people come to believe it had expansive forests and a Martian civilization? And how did one epic mission bring us closer to understanding what's really happening on the Red Planet?

Special thanks to William Sheehan, author of Discovering Mars: A History of Observation and Exploration of the Red Planet; and Kevin Schindler, historian of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.

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October 24, 79 CE. Pompeii is one of the crown jewels of the Roman Empire, a bustling city that serves as a coastal retreat for Rome's elite. But Pompeii also has a large, often overlooked middle-class population. They don't live in Pompeii's massive villas. Instead, they live a typical urban life – shopping at small businesses and haggling with street vendors. They even go to restaurants. And one of these restaurants—still being excavated by archeologists today—may unlock a whole new side to the story of this doomed city.

So, before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, how did everyday people live in Pompeii? And how can just one city block show us that life 2,000 years ago might not be so different from today?

Special thanks to our guest, Allison Emmerson, associate professor of Roman Archeology at Tulane University and director of the Pompeii I.14 Project.

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Gone South, the Edward R. Murrow award-winning podcast, is back. Unlike previous seasons, writer and host Jed Lipinski brings listeners new episodes every week with no end in sight. Each episode of Gone South Season 4 tells a different story about one of the South's most interesting crimes.

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October 18, 1887. At the Crystal Palace in London, hundreds of cats are ready to be judged. This is the first show put on by the National Cat Club, an organization seeking to bring order to the competitive cat world. But the NCC has another goal, to bring legitimacy and attention to a new idea: having a cat as a pet.

Even just a couple of decades before this, you’d rarely find a cat living in a person’s home. Cats were on the streets – living near humans, not with them. They’re pretty much seen on the same level as the mice they catch. But now, cats are starting to get their due. So, how did cats overcome their image problem? And who were the artists who helped us fall in love with our feline friends?

Special thanks to Kathryn Hughes, author of Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania.

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October 11, 1975. In Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Center in New York City, Lorne Michaels and his cast and crew of 20-somethings scramble as the clock gets closer and closer to 11:30 PM. Wardrobes are being assembled, sets put together, and everyone—from NBC executives to viewers at home—anxiously awaits the start of what's supposed to be "a whole new dimension for TV." In just a few minutes, NBC's Saturday Night will be broadcast live across America, and change television forever.

Today, guest host Dave Holmes interviews author James Andrew Miller to find out... what happened in the lead-up to the first episode of SNL? And how did one man's unwavering vision result in the most influential comedy program of the century?

Special thanks to James Andrew Miller, author of Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live.

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October 9, 1944. In California, 50 U.S. sailors are on trial for the Navy’s most serious crime, mutiny. It’s a rarely used charge, yet these 50 sailors—all of whom are Black—face the death penalty if convicted. But today, their chances of a fair trial get a little better. 

Thurgood Marshall enters the courtroom. He is the lead attorney for the NAACP, and believes that this trial is a direct result of ongoing segregation and racism in the U.S. military. Knowing the odds are against him, Marshall will do everything he can to prevent a miscarriage of justice.

Today, the Port Chicago Mutiny. Why did 50 Black sailors working on the homefront get charged with a capital crime? And with Thurgood Marshall on their side, will justice prevail in the courtroom?

Special thanks to Matthew Delmont, professor of history at Dartmouth College and author of Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad; and Steve Sheinkin, author of The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights.

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October 5, 1871. In what some call the wildest town in the Wild West, bad blood has been building for a long time. Wild Bill Hickok, the sheriff of Abilene, Kansas, is facing down Phil Coe, a saloon owner with a history of antagonizing the law. Then, the guns come out. This kind of shootout isn’t uncommon in the Old West, but it’s a lot more complicated than good guys versus bad guys. And to understand it on a deeper level, you just have to play a video game.

Red Dead Redemption is a wildly popular gaming franchise, filled with train robberies, cattle rustling, and gunfights. And today, we take a close look at the real history behind the second game in this legendary series. Who are the inspirations behind its main characters? And how can understanding this video game help us to learn the true story of the Wild West?

Special thanks to our interview guest, Tore Olsson, author of Red Dead’s History: A Video Game, An Obsession, and America’s Violent Past.

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September 27, 1986. Just before sunrise in Cleveland’s Public Square, the city center is abuzz with thousands of volunteers working tirelessly to fill up balloons. The goal? To launch 1.5 million balloons into the sky at once - a record-breaking spectacle, organized by Cleveland's United Way. They hope this will bring money and inspiration to a city that desperately needs both.

Why did Cleveland choose this colorful stunt to repair its public image? And should this day be remembered as a triumph… or a disaster?

Special thanks to Dr. George Fraser, former marketing director for the United Way of Cleveland and CEO and founder of FraserNet Incorporated; Chris Quinn, editor of The Plain-Dealer in Cleveland; and Nathan Truesdell, documentary filmmaker.

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September 16, 1968. Richard Nixon isn't exactly seen as a comedian. But tonight, he's trying to change that by appearing on Laugh-In, a TV show similar to Saturday Night Live. Nixon needs every vote he can get in the 1968 election, facing off against Hubert Humphrey, the vice president who became the Democratic nominee after Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the ticket.

Nixon's Laugh-In appearance is a surprise, but soon, he'll pull off a move that no one would ever expect. How did back-channel dealings, unattended teleprompters, and Oval Office shouting matches turn this election into an all-time drama? And what do recently uncovered conversations reveal about how far Nixon was willing to go to secure victory?

Special thanks to David Farber, professor of history at the University of Kansas and author of Chicago ‘68; Lawrence O’Donnell, host of The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC and author of Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics; and Luke Nichter, professor of history at Chapman University and author of The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968.

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What happened this week 50 years ago? 100 years ago? 1,000?

Listen to HISTORY This Week every Monday to discover for yourself.

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HISTORY This Week returns with new episodes starting September 16th! In the meantime, listen to a favorite classic from the archives.

September 11, 2001. On a clear and sunny day, Captain Richard Thornton is piloting his ferry boat back and forth between New Jersey and New York City. But when he hears an airplane flying too low to the ground, he knows something is wrong. After the World Trade Center’s North Tower is struck, Thornton instinctively drives his ship down towards Lower Manhattan. He will soon be joined by countless other marine craft: ferries, fishing boats, tugboats, and more. With the roads, bridges, and trains that connect the island of Manhattan to the rest of the world shut down, this collection of civilian, commercial, and military boats manages to carry more than 500,000 survivors to safety. How did this impromptu evacuation, which was larger than Dunkirk during WWII, come together? And how does one ferry boat captain reflect on the shared sense of duty he felt on that fateful day?

This episode originally aired on September 6, 2021.

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HISTORY This Week returns with new episodes starting September 16th! In the meantime, listen to a favorite classic from the archives.

September 2, 31 BCE. Two camps prepare for battle off the coast of Greece. On one side is Octavian, Julius Caesar’s heir apparent. On the other, Marc Antony and his lover, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. This battle won’t just determine the leader of Rome, but the fate of global civilization. How did Cleopatra wind up in the middle of a Roman game of tug of war? And how did the Battle of Actium change our world forever?

Special thanks to our guest, Barry Strauss, author of The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium.

This episode originally aired on August 29, 2022.

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HISTORY This Week returns with new episodes starting September 16th! In the meantime, listen to a favorite classic from the archives.

August 27, 1900. Dr. Jesse Lazear, a U.S. Army surgeon, walks into Las Animas Hospital Yellow Fever ward in Havana, Cuba, toting a brood of mosquitos. He has the system down: remove the cotton stopper that keeps the mosquito penned in its glass vial, turn the vial over, and seal it against a consenting infected patient’s skin. Chasing the source of Yellow Fever, scientists try to understand this deadly plague by running a high-stakes medical experiment on human subjects. But today, those subjects will include themselves. Why did ordinary people—and the doctors running the experiment—willingly and knowingly consent to take part in this study? And when we look back, should we be horrified... or impressed?

Special thanks to our guests: Dr. Kathryn Olivarius of Stanford University and author of, Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom, as well as Molly Crosby author of, The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever the Epidemic That Shaped Our History.

This episode originally aired on August 22, 2022.

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HISTORY This Week returns with new episodes starting September 16th! In the meantime, listen to a favorite classic from the archives.

August 21, 1911. On a Monday morning, a department store employee on a Paris street sees a man hurrying by. He carries a white-wrapped package and, as the employee watches, he throws something small and shiny over his shoulder...it’s a doorknob. Then the man disappears into the streets of Paris. That store employee has just witnessed a small part of what will soon become the world’s most famous crime. In that white-wrapped package was...the Mona Lisa. Why has the Mona Lisa enchanted so many people since the 1500s? And how did a struggling Italian handyman manage to steal it?

Thank you to our guests, Martin Kemp, author of Mona Lisa. The People and the Painting, and Dr. Noah Charney, founder of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

This episode originally aired on August 16, 2021.

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After a long, long wait, we are very happy to be bringing HISTORY This Week back to our listeners around the world. New episodes start releasing on September 16th, but in the meantime, we’ll be airing some favorite HTW classics in our feed. If you haven’t already, make sure to follow the show on your favorite podcast app. 

Please sign up at historythisweekpodcast.com to stay updated, and if you want to reach out, contact us at historythisweek@history.com for any questions or thoughts. See you soon!

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August 14, 2023. The HTW team is ready to talk. In a special episode that wraps up Season 4, Sally asks the people behind the scenes about lessons they've learned from telling hundreds of true stories about the past. It’s a great conversation you’re not going to want to miss. 

And when you’re finished, please fill out our listener survey: bit.ly/htw2023.

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August 8, 1974. President Richard Nixon sits in the Oval Office, addressing the American people. He tells them: I’m going to resign. The news is shocking, but not unexpected. Today, it might even seem inevitable. But in the days leading up to the big decision, Nixon himself didn’t know what he would do. At night he roamed the halls of the White House, torturously weighing his options. He even ordered a speechwriter to draft a statement announcing his refusal to resign. Sally Helm sits down with political speechwriter Jeff Nussbaum to talk about this curious kind of a document: a speech that could’ve changed history if only it had been given. They discuss what Nixon, and two other speech givers, would have felt preparing multiple drafts, as they faced an uncertain future, and how the world would be different had these speeches been given.

Special thanks to our guest: Jeff Nussbaum, author of Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches That Would Have Rewritten History.

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We’ll be back next week with a regular episode, but please listen to this for an important HTW update!

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August 4, 1846. A few months into their journey from Illinois to California, a group of pioneers encounters trouble. They’ve just found a note from their guide. It essentially says, “That shortcut I told you to take through the Wasatch Mountains – don’t.” The setback disastrously delays their trip. Weeks later, when they reach the Sierra Nevada, it’s dangerously late in the season. Soon, a winter storm traps them in the mountains. What did they have to do to survive? And what’s the truth behind the legendary Donner Party?

Special thanks to our guest: Daniel James Brown, author of The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride.

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July 16, 1945. It happened within a millionth of a second. In the New Mexico desert in the early morning hours, a group of scientists watched in anticipation as the countdown began. It was silent at first, yet hot and unbelievably bright. Then came the sound. The first-ever atomic bomb explosion... was a success. How did scientists working on the Manhattan Project create what was then the most powerful weapon in history? And how did the bomb’s existence forever change our sense of what human beings are capable of?

Thank you to our guest Dr. Jon Hunner, a professor emeritus of U.S. history at New Mexico State University and author of Inventing Los Alamos: The Growth of an Atomic Community and J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Cold War, and the Atomic West.

This episode originally aired July 13, 2020.

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July 29th, 1992. The Baltimore Sun runs a feature about a surprise candidate in the upcoming presidential race: Barbie. The 11.5-inch icon of girlhood and glamor is running for office – and flying off the shelves. But how did a plaything become important enough to make national news? To answer that question, we take you on a journey through doll history, from French porcelain beauties to cherubs that stood for women’s suffrage. And of course, the doll who taught us how fun life in plastic could be. How did these dolls revolutionize play and even politics? And what do they have to tell us about ourselves? 

Special thanks to our guests: Florence Theriault, doll expert and founder of Theriault’s antique auction firm; Pat Wahler, author of The Rose of Washington Square: A Novel of Rose O'Neill, Creator of the Kewpie Doll; and Robin Gerber, author of Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her.

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July 19, 1869. Naturalist John Muir watches the sun rise over the Sierra Nevada mountains. He’ll write in his journal of the stirring birds, glowing treetops, and even rocks that “seem to thrill with life.” He’s so taken with this landscape that he’ll decide to stay in the Yosemite Valley and try to protect it with the only weapon he has: the pen. How did Muir collide with the political forces of his day and help bring about National Parks as we know them? And how did he change the way many Americans think about the natural world?

Special thanks to our guest: Dean King, author of Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship That Saved Yosemite.

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July 16, 1945. It’s the summer of 1945 and World War II is underway. The USS Indianapolis has just set out from Mare Island on a top-secret mission. The famous vessel is delivering enriched uranium and other components of “Little Boy” to Tinian Island. The mission is technically a success, but for the men aboard the Indianapolis, the challenges are just beginning. On July 30, the ship is struck by two Japanese torpedoes, stranding its sailors at sea. For three and a half days, survivors are left floating in the Pacific Ocean, fending off sun exposure, dehydration, and shark attacks – and waiting for help. Were any able to survive? And could this attack have been prevented?

Special thanks to our guest: Sara Vladic, co-author of Indianapolis: The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster in U.S. Naval History and the Fifty-Year Fight to Exonerate an Innocent Man. She’s also the director of the documentary USS Indianapolis: The Legacy.

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July 8, 1843. Amidst the rolling hills of rural Massachusetts, a group of Transcendentalists come together to form a collective built around self-perfection and reverence for nature. And on this day poet Ralph Waldo Emerson stops by for a visit. Their name for this experimental Eden? Fruitlands. But every Eden has its fall, and by the time autumn winds blow over their 90 acres, the Fruitlanders are in trouble. How did a group of thinkers, writers, and educators come together to form one of the most famous utopian failures of the 19th century? And what can we learn from their attempt?

Special thanks to our guests, Richard Francis, author of Fruitlands: The Alcott Family and Their Search for Utopia. And Catherine Shortliffe, Engagement Manager of the Fruitlands Museum and the Old Manse at The Trustees.

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July 2, 1957. At the annual Tupperware jubilee in Florida, company VP Brownie Wise is admiring her handiwork. 1,200 people have convened on her private island for a luau—complete with live lobsters, orchid leis and prizes for Tupperware’s top sellers. Most of the people here owe their job to her. That's because Brownie perfected a sales strategy that has made the innovative plastic product famous. Not to mention a cash cow. She's famous, too: Fortune and CBS News have hailed her as a savvy corporate leader. But tonight, at this fabulous celebration of the company's glittering success, storm clouds are gathering. How did a single mom from Michigan turn a simple household product into a juggernaut? And how did all go wrong? 

Special thanks to our guests: Alison Clarke, design history professor at University of Applied Arts - Vienna and author of Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America; and Bob Kealing, author of Life of the Party: The Remarkable Story of How Brownie Wise Built, and Lost, a Tupperware Party Empire.

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June 21, 1998. Father's Day. At the Church of the Atonement in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, Jon and Michael Galluccio are ready to tie the knot, in front of family, friends, reporters, and one lone picketer. The Galluccios are already public figures—a few months earlier, they had secured the right for gay and unmarried couples to jointly adopt children. And today, they pull up to their wedding in a minivan, with their son in tow: as a family. How did this family come together? And how did their son's adoption end up changing the lives of other families all across the country?

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June 12, 1928. The great Blues singer Ma Rainey steps up to the microphone at a studio in Chicago. She’s there to record a scandalous song called “Prove It On Me Blues.” It’s her answer to the rumor that she’d once attended a party with a bunch of other half-clothed women – a party that got busted by the cops. It’s a rumor she doesn’t deny. The song is just the latest of Rainey’s boundary-pushing moves. Her audience, and her record label, eat it up. How did Ma Rainey talk about sex and sexuality through the Blues? And in the America of that time, how was a boldness like hers even possible?

Special thanks to our guests: Darryl Bullock, author of Queer Blues: The Hidden Figures of Early Blues Music, which will be published this July; Dr. Steven Lewis, curator of Music and Performing Arts at the National Museum of African American History and Culture; and Dr. Tyina Steptoe, history professor at the University of Arizona and host of “Soul Stories” on KXCI Tucson. Thanks also to Dr. Cookie Woolner, history professor at the University of Memphis and author of ​​The Famous Lady Lovers: Black Women & Queer Desire Before Stonewall, which will be published in September.

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June 10, 1816. A storm settles over Lake Geneva, Switzerland. Stuck inside a romantic villa, five writers grow restless. Then one of them issues a challenge: Who among us can write the most terrifying ghost story? The group includes two of the most accomplished poets of the day – Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. But it’s Percy's lover, Mary, who creates an enduring masterpiece: the novel Frankenstein. How did Mary Shelley draw from her life to write this harrowing story? And why have we been talking about it for more than two hundred years?

Special thanks to our guest, Charlotte Gordon, author of Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley.

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June 1, 1936. The Supreme Court hands down its last decision of the term. The justices have dealt blow after blow to President Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation, and today is no different: they rule against FDR again. It’s the last straw. Roosevelt is going to do something drastic – try to reshape the Supreme Court itself. Will FDR’s bold move get him what he wants? And how will the Court try to stop him?

Special thanks to our guests: Laura Kalman, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara and author of FDR’s Gambit: The Court Packing Fight and the Rise of Legal Liberalism; and Michael Nelson, political science professor at Rhodes College and author of Vaulting Ambition: FDR's Campaign to Pack the Supreme Court. Thanks also to Clare Cushman, resident historian at the Supreme Court Historical Society.

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May 23, 1934. On a muggy Louisiana morning, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow speed toward the Texas border. They’ve been on the run for over a year—wanted for robbery and murder—and the lurid news accounts of their exploits have made them famous. But today, Bonnie and Clyde’s legendary crime spree comes to an end … in a hail of bullets. Why did some come to view these Depression Era outlaws as agents of chaos the country needed? And what was the real motivation behind their crimes?

Special thanks to our guest, John Neal Phillips, author of Running With Bonnie and Clyde: The Ten Fast Years of Ralph Fults.

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May 16, 1920. Tens of thousands of people surround St. Peter’s Basilica to honor Joan of Arc, a French peasant girl who died nearly five hundred years before. Joan’s feats in battle—and her visions of God—have become legendary since her heyday during The Hundred Years War. And today, the Catholic Church is making her a saint. But Joan was a real person – and while many supported her during her lifetime, many others wanted her dead. Who was this curious figure? And how did her faith turn the tides of a seemingly endless age of violence?

Special thanks to our guests: Nancy Goldstone, author of The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc, and Charity Urbanski, associate history professor at the University of Washington.

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May 10, 2002. Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen is sentenced to life in prison without parole. His crime? Selling scads of top-secret information to the Soviets – and later, the Russians – over 22 years. How did Hanssen get away with his deception for so long, which led to the deaths of operatives working for the United States? Was he a criminal mastermind … or just a guy with incredible luck? 

Special thanks to our guests: Elaine Shannon, author of The Spy Next Door: The Extraordinary Secret Life of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Damaging FBI Agent in U.S. History, and Eric O'Neill, author of Gray Day: My Undercover Mission to Expose America's First Cyber Spy.

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May 6, 2023. For the first time in 70 years, Great Britain will crown a new monarch. King Charles III will officially take the throne, and his wife will be named Queen Camilla. The coronation itself is brimming with history, the first at Westminster Abbey held nearly 1,000 years ago. 

Today, Sally speaks to Katie Nicholl (royal correspondent for Vanity Fair and host of the Dynasty podcast) to unpack how this coronation came to be and what it signifies in the modern world.

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May 6, 1949. On the runway at Lindbergh Field in San Diego, a scrappy upstart called Pacific Southwest Airlines, PSA, is about to take its first flight. PSA is a budget airline—the world’s first. Other jet age carriers will offer luxury in the sky, but PSA does not. It’s exploiting a loophole in the American flight system to do things very differently. How did PSA manage to offer flying to ordinary people at prices they could afford? And how did it force an entire industry to reimagine itself?

Special thanks to our guests: Mary Boies, former fellow on the Senate Commerce Committee, White House staffer, and general counsel to the Civil Aeronautics Board; Jim Patterson, early PSA employee, and eventually its vice president of operations; and Michael Roach, former lawyer at the Civil Aeronautics Board.

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April 27, 1856. In Beijing’s Forbidden City, one of the emperor’s consorts, a woman named Cixi, has given birth to a son – the emperor’s first heir. This landmark event is met with mass celebration. But in just five years time, the emperor will be dead and Cixi will be planning a coup to take power for herself. How will she ever succeed? 

Special thanks to our guests: Jung Chang, author of Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China and Professor Ying-chen Peng, author of Artful Subversion: Empress Dowager Cixi's Image Making in Art.

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April 20, 1963. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. walks out of Alabama’s Birmingham Jail after being held for a week for peacefully protesting. He spent most of that time writing a letter that passionately defends the civil rights movements’s nonviolent tactics. But despite King’s passion, the movement’s progress has stalled. King needs a major victory in Birmingham, but he’s running out of people willing to risk their livelihoods and safety for this cause. So a new tactic starts taking shape: recruiting young people to protest. After all, kids have the least to lose and the most to gain from a more equal future. But King says the risk is too high. So what changes his mind about putting kids on the front lines? And how did the Children’s March shift Americans’ support of civil rights? 

Special thanks to our guests: Children’s Crusade participants Jessie Shepherd, Janice Wesley Kelsey, and Charles Avery. And Ahmad Ward, former head of education at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and current Executive Director at Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park.

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April 10, 1971. A team of ping pong players leaves Hong Kong to step across a border and become the first group of Americans welcomed to China in over 20 years. These competitors find themselves becoming unlikely diplomats at the center of a media frenzy, and at the heart of one of the 20th century’s major geopolitical shifts. How did table tennis turn into a powerful tool of foreign policy? And how did these athletes leave an impact that went far beyond the ping pong table?

Special thanks to our guests: professional table tennis athletes Judy Hoarfrost, Olga Soltesz, and Connie Sweeris; Yafeng Xia, senior professor of social science at Long Island University Brooklyn, and author of Negotiating with the Enemy: U.S.-China Talks during the Cold War, 1949-1972; and Nicholas Griffin, author of Ping Pong Diplomacy: The Secret History Behind the Game That Changed the World.

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April 3, 1974. Across America, many people wake up this morning thinking it will be a normal day. But in the next 24 hours, almost 150 tornadoes will hit the United States. It will be then the largest tornado outbreak in the nation's history. Why did so many deadly tornadoes hit on this one day? And how did it spur life-saving changes that are still with us decades later?

This episode originally aired in 2021.

Thank you to our guests Greg Forbes, former severe weather expert with the Weather Channel, and Atmospheric Sciences professor, Jeff Trapp, from the University of Illinois.

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April 1, 2023. In honor of April Fools’ Day, we give you three historical tales of the bluff and the bamboozle. An autumn day in 1726, when an English peasant gives birth to something mysterious … and furry. Mets spring training in 1985, as the world meets an otherworldly baseball player with a superhuman arm. Finally, the summer of 1835 in NYC, when a scrappy start-up of a newspaper starts a frenzy about its exclusive: there’s life on the moon! Along the way, we’ll learn what it takes to pull off a convincing hoax. And how we can avoid being duped ourselves!

Special thanks to our guests: Karen Harvey, professor of cultural history at the University of Birmingham and author of The Imposteress Rabbit Breeder: Mary Toft and Eighteenth-Century England; Jay Horwitz, former PR director and current VP of Alumni Relations for the New York Mets; and Matthew Goodman, author of The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York.

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March 25, 1911. It’s quarter to five on a Saturday—closing time at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Someone on the cutting room floor lights a cigarette… that ignites a pile of scraps. Over the next fifteen minutes, hundreds of workers scramble to escape the top floors of this ten-story building by smoke-filled stairwell, crammed elevators, and an overloaded fire escape. 146 of them don’t make it out. How was this tragedy set in motion years before the fire itself? And how did reforms passed in the wake of the fire change the workplace for all of us?

Special thanks to our guests: Kat Lloyd, vice president of programs and interpretation at New York's Tenement Museum, and David Von Drehle, author of Triangle: The Fire That Changed America.

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March 17, 1828. The celebrated clown, Joseph Grimaldi, rises from his sickbed. Once London’s most energetic performer, he’s gradually been crippled by decades of pratfalls and acrobatics. He can barely manage the short walk to Sadler’s Wells theater, where he’s about to star in a final show. Grimaldi dresses backstage as if he’s in a daze, burdened by a lifetime of personal sorrows. And yet, when the curtain rises, he’ll summon the old strength. He’ll entertain this last of his countless audiences and send them home happy – unlike the clown himself. Who was Joseph Grimaldi? And how did he blend humor, irreverence, and humanity to fundamentally change comedy?

Special thanks to our guests, Andrew McConnell Stott, author of The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain’s Greatest Comedian, and Naomi Shafer, Executive Director of Clowns Without Borders USA.

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March 10, 1949. Defendant Mildred Gillars arrives at a courthouse to hear her verdict. To trial-watchers, she’s known as Axis Sally—the American woman who broadcast Nazi propaganda from Berlin during World War II. In taunting tones, she spent years pushing anti-Semitic and anti-Allies messages aimed at weakening the morale of American soldiers. But Gillars insists that she’s misunderstood, even innocent. That she’s an artist, she loves her country, and was forced to do what she did… or die. How did a struggling actress from Maine become a potent weapon of the Nazis? And is there a way to understand the choices that she made?

Special thanks to our guests, Richard Lucas, author of Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany, and Michael Flamm, professor of history at Ohio Wesleyan University. Thanks also to the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress.

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A new History Channel podcast, American Football is the untold tale of the rough-and-tumble origins of the National Football League. Produced and presented by Michael Strahan and narrated by actress and pro football enthusiast Kate Mara, this podcast reaches back into the past to explain the dirty, bloody, and tumultuous beginnings of America's most popular sport.

In this first episode, the sport of American football begins as a stand-in for war – a place where young men at elite colleges could prove their mettle fighting on the gridiron.

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March 2, 1969. French pilot André Turcat takes to the skies above Toulouse-Blagnac airport. He’s flying an odd-looking plane: long and slender with triangular wings and a bent-down nose like a bird of prey. It’s called the Concorde – a jet designed to move supersonic flight from military to civilian use. If it works, paying passengers will be able to cross continents and oceans at fantastic speeds while sipping glasses of champagne. The crowd below watches, mesmerized, as Turcat puts the plane through its paces. Concorde aces the test and now, as they say, the sky’s the limit. How did this space age technology, born of the Cold War, usher in one of the most glamorous eras of commercial flight? And what caused it to come to an end? 

Special thanks to our guest, Mike Bannister, author of Concorde: The Thrilling Account of History’s Most Extraordinary Airliner. Thanks also to the folks at the Brooklands Museum.

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February 22, 1962. The city of Berlin is cut in half by a concrete and barbed wire wall. On the west side, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy is giving a rousing speech when suddenly, what look like balloons explode above the crowd, revealing Soviet-red flags. “The Communists will let the balloons through,” Kennedy says. “But they won’t let their people through!” Meanwhile in the east, the streets are quiet. The people on both sides of the wall live in its shadow. They are family members and former neighbors, many of them wondering, “Is this really here to stay?” How did Berlin become the bitter borderland in the global propaganda war between the United States and the Soviet Union? And why did it take so long for the Berlin Wall to come down?

Special thanks to our guest, Hope Harrison, professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University and the author of Driving the Soviets up the Wall: Soviet-East German Relations, 1953-1961.

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February 14, 1934. When Adelaide Hall steps onstage at The Apollo Theater, she’s greeted by an audience unlike those she’s experienced before. Hall is already famous—she’s been on Broadway and performed at Harlem’s Cotton Club. But those theaters are segregated. The Apollo has just recently opened its doors to Black audiences, and Hall’s performance there helps put the revamped theater on the map. It marks the beginning of the end of segregated shows. In this roundtable discussion with The Apollo’s resident historian and its executive producer, we explore how this 89-year-old theater with 1,500-seats helped catapult some of the nation's best-known performers to stardom, and how it forever changed American music.

Special thanks to our guests, Kamilah Forbes, The Apollo Theater’s executive producer, and Billy Mitchell, its historian and tour guide. Look out for The Apollo’s multi-stage expansion and renovation, coming in Fall 2023.

Correction: As of publication, The Apollo is 89 years old.

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February 11, 2005. FBI agents bust down the door of a cinder block house near the University of Kentucky campus. Amid flash grenades and screaming teens, they arrest three students – plus a fourth student in a nearby dorm. The crime? Stealing almost $750,000 of rare books and manuscripts from the library at Transylvania University. Why did four freshmen decide to actually go through with their real life version of Ocean’s Eleven? And how did they plan to get away with it? 

Special thanks to our guests, BJ Gooch, retired special collections librarian; Eric Borsuk, whose memoir is called American Animals: A True Crime Memoir; and Tom Lecky, rare book and manuscript specialist.

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January 30, 1649 / 1661. London, 1649. King Charles I lays his head on a chopping block. The axe falls and, soon with it, the monarchy. What follows is Parliament’s grueling effort to set up a functioning republic – one of the first in history. It will be led by Oliver Cromwell, a brilliant military leader who becomes the country’s most powerful man. But on January 30, 1661 – exactly twelve years after the death of Charles I – royalist forces will use the same method to take their revenge: a beheading. Who was Oliver Cromwell, the man who led Britain’s brief experiment in life without a king? And how did it all go wrong?

Special thanks to our guests, Martyn Bennett, professor of early modern history at Nottingham Trent University and author of several books including Cromwell at War: The Lord General and His Military Revolution; and Peter Gaunt, professor of history at the University of Chester and author/editor of books including two Cromwell biographies, both entitled Oliver Cromwell.

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January 27, 1925. Musher “Wild Bill” Shannon and his team of sled dogs race off into the frigid Alaskan night. He’s carrying a package of life-saving serum, wrapped in fur to keep it from freezing. There’s no time to waste: nearly 700 miles away, in the snowed-in town of Nome, children are dying of diphtheria. Twenty mushers and hundreds of dogs are about to take part in an almost superhuman effort to ferry desperately needed medicine across the howling Alaskan wilderness. Who were they, and what did they endure to reach their goal? And as they pressed on, how did their efforts grip the nation?

Special thanks to our guests, Pam Flowers, author of Togo and Leonhard, and Bob Thomas, author of Leonhard Seppala: The Siberian Dog and The Golden Age of Sleddog Racing 1908-1941.

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Here’s a special episode of Cautionary Tales, a podcast from our friends at Pushkin Industries. On Cautionary Tales, bestselling author Tim Harford shares stories of human error, natural disasters, and tragic catastrophes from history that contain important lessons for today. In today’s episode, we’ll learn about civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr and jewelry store owner Gerald Ratner. The two offer starkly contrasting stories on when you should stick to the script and when you should take a risk. Hear more from Cautionary Tales at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/CTHTW. 

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January 11, 2022. Lt. Col. James Harvey arrives at Nellis Air Force base in Nevada for the first time in 73 years. He’s there to accept a plaque celebrating the last time he was there—for the Air Force’s first ever weapons competition. Back then, Harvey and the other Tuskegee Airmen on his team had squared off against the best military pilots around. They tackled high-skill tests of simulated aerial warfare… and they won. But over the decades, the official record of their victory was lost or neglected. Who were these exceptional Black pilots? And what did it take to rescue their accomplishments from obscurity and bring them into the light?

Special thanks to our guests: Lt. Col. James Harvey III and Lt. Col. Harry Stewart Jr. Lt. Col. Stewart is the co-author of Soaring to Glory. Thanks also to Zellie Rainey Orr, author of Heroes in War, Heroes at Home, and to Daniel Haulman, retired historian at the Air Force Historical Research Agency and author of Misconceptions about the Tuskegee Airmen, to be published in February 2023.

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January 3, 1924. Archeologists crowd into an ancient Egyptian tomb to uncover what awaits them in the unopened burial chamber. The world is waiting to find out. That’s because two years before, the discovery of the tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun revealed antiquities so dazzling that a media frenzy ensued – newspapers, newsreels, and Hollywood movies vied to show audiences these wonders of ancient Egypt. Now, lead archaeologist Howard Carter pushes open the door to find a majestic stone sarcophagus. Inside lies Tutankhamun, whose regal face of gold and azure blue has lain in darkness for millennia. He’s about to meet the new century … and dazzle the world anew. How did an unknown pharaoh become a sensation? And how did a modern revolution change the fate of Egypt's most precious artifacts?

Special thanks to our guests, Professor Christina Riggs, author of Treasured: How Tutankhamun Shaped a Century, and Heba Abd el Gawad, Heritage Specialist and Museum Researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, University College of London, and researcher with Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage project.

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December 26, 2022. For the first time, a behind-the-scenes look at a key part of the History This Week episode-making process. Today, we’re inviting our listeners to pull up a chair and join one of our pitch sessions. Usually, an editor consults with the team to choose which story we'll be telling in a given episode. But this time… you'll decide! So listen, vote, and maybe win some History This Week swag. Tune in to learn how we make history.

All voting should be sent to our email, HistoryThisWeek@history.com. Remember, your options are Julia (Henry Ward Beecher), Emma (Axis Sally), Corinne (Jane Fonda), and Ben (CD-ROM). Please only include the producer's name in the subject line. We do not accept any unsolicited ideas or pitch material. Thanks for a great year of listening!

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Christmas Eve, 1913. For months, newspapers have been trumpeting an urgent message: Do your Christmas shopping early. It would be easy to assume this was the work of greedy department stores and slick ad companies. But it wasn’t – at least not at first. It started as the rallying cry of a labor reformer who was striving to improve the lives of retail workers. Ever since, Americans have been wrestling over the values at the heart of holiday shopping. But even the most earnest efforts at reform have backfired, time and again. How did Christmas gifts become a thing in the first place? And what were some of the spirited attempts to make the holiday shopping season merry for all?

Special thanks to our guests: Jennifer Le Zotte, professor of history and material culture at the University of North Carolina - Wilmington; Ellen Litwicki, professor emerita at the State University of New York at Fredonia; and Paul Ringel, professor of history at High Point University and author of Commercializing Childhood.

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December 16, 1773. Samuel Adams sits in a crowded meeting of American colonists at Boston’s Old South Meeting House. He’s watching small groups of men slip quietly out the door. Once outside, the men don disguises and make their way toward three ships moored in the harbor – each weighted down with chests of valuable British East India tea. The men climb aboard, tear open the chests and dump the tea in the water. Cheers fill the winter night. Back at the meeting, Samuel Adams waits. There’s nothing directly tying him to this radical act of rebellion … but few doubt he’s behind it. How did a chronic underachiever help light the fuse of the American revolution? And why has this important Founding Father largely been forgotten? 

Special thanks to our guest, Stacy Schiff, author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams.

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December 8, 1914. Crowds pour into the New Amsterdam Theater to see the opening night of a new show, “Watch Your Step.” It’s the first full-length revue written by the popular young songwriter, Irving Berlin. His songs show off Berlin’s signature wit and simplicity, but also his musical sophistication. As his fellow composer, Jerome Kern, would later put it: "Berlin has no place in American music—he is American music.” Who was Irving Berlin? And how did he utterly transform American songwriting?

Thanks to our guests: James Kaplan, author of Irving Berlin: New York Genius; Laurence Maslon, arts professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and host of the radio show "Broadway to Main Street" on WLIW; and Katherine Barrett Swett, English teacher, poet, and granddaughter of Irving Berlin and Ellin Mackay.

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November 30, 1954. At about 12:45 in the afternoon, a space rock comes plummeting through the roof of a house in Sylacauga, Alabama. It bounces off a standup radio, ricochets around the living room, and collides with the thigh of Mrs. Ann Hodges, who’s been napping on the couch. Newspapers declare: “experts agreed unanimously that Mrs. Hodges was the first person known to have been struck by a meteorite.” What happened to this space rock after it crashed to Earth and thrust itself into volatile human affairs? And what happened to the human beings whose lives were upended by this rarest of rare events?

Thanks to our guests: Dr. Julia Cartwright, planetary scientist at the University of Alabama; Billy Field, professor at the University of Alabama and screenwriter; and Julie Love Templeton, attorney in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Dr. Cartwright is involved in a number of art/science collaborations to engage and educate the public about meteorites and planetary science. You can find out more on her website, JACartwright.people.ua.edu. Keep an eye out for Billy Field’s latest project, TheStoryAcorn.com, which launches in January 2023. The website will feature history from the Civil Rights movement, told by those who lived it. The website teaches students to gather stories from their own communities and share them with the world. Thanks also to Mary Beth Prondzinski, former collections manager at the Alabama Museum of Natural History, and to the Alabama Museum of Natural History.

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November 22, 1718. Early morning, off the North Carolina coast. The pirate Blackbeard, peering over the rail of his ship, is startled to discover that a pair of British naval ships are after him. He rouses his hungover crew and gives the order to flee to the open sea. The pirating life is treacherous: filled with double-crosses, shifting alliances, and violence. The best pirates cultivate harsh reputations in order to scare their foes into surrendering without a fight. And no one is feared more than Blackbeard. But now the authorities have decided to hunt him down. How did Blackbeard become a legend, the one pirate we all remember? And where lies the truth within this treasure trove of stories? 

Special thanks to our guest, Eric Jay Dolin, author of Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates. Dolin’s latest book is Rebels At Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution.

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November 16, 1532. Atahualpa, the king of the Inca Empire, marches towards the city of Cajamarca in modern-day Peru, surrounded by 80,000 soldiers. Once he arrives, Atahualpa expects the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro to surrender in the town square. But Pizarro has a plan of his own. With just 168 men, he will unleash a trap that destroys the Inca Empire, and brings thousands of years of indigenous rule to a violent end. What was happening in the Andes before Pizarro arrived that allowed this to take place? And when history is written by the victors, how do we know what’s really true?

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November 7, 1811. William Henry Harrison and his troops are camped near the Wabash river. They’ve been told to keep the peace—but Harrison wants land, and he’s come here to try and take it. Less than a mile away is a flourishing Native American settlement called Prophetstown. It’s led by Tecumseh, a skilled diplomat and warrior, and his brother Tenskwatawa, whose religious teachings have attracted indigenous people from across the newly-formed United States. Before dawn, these two sides will be in a battle that ends with one of their settlements burned to the ground. How did a future president exploit this conflict to catapult himself all the way to the White House? And how did Prophetstown become the most powerful alliance of Native American military, spiritual, and social forces to ever take on the US government?

Thanks to our guests, Chief Ben Barnes; Peter Cozzens, author of Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Heroic Struggle for America’s Heartland; and Stephen Warren, author of The Shawnees and Their Neighbors, 1795-1870. Chief Barnes and Stephen Warren are co-editors of the book, Replanting Cultures: Community-Engaged Scholarship in Indian Country. Look out for Cozzens’ forthcoming book, A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, The Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South. 

Thanks also to Douglas Winiarski, author of Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England; and to Adam Jortner, author of The Gods of Prophetstown: The Battle of Tippecanoe and the Holy War for the American Frontier.

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November 5, 1998. Using DNA evidence, the scientific journal Nature publishes findings that put to rest a centuries-old mystery: Was Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman at Monticello, the mother of six of Thomas Jefferson’s children? Until then, the historical consensus had been this: “The Jefferson-Hemings relationship can be neither refuted nor substantiated.” Jefferson’s white descendants were more categorical: they flatly denied it. But now the truth was out. Why was this story denied for so long, and what does that say about whose version of history is believed? And how did it revise our understanding of America’s third president?

Special thanks to our guests: Professor Annette Gordon-Reed, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family as well as the book, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: an American Controversy. And Gayle Jessup White, a descendant of Thomas Jefferson

and Sally Hemings and author of the book, Reclamation: Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, and a Descendant’s Search for her Family’s Lasting Legacy.

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October 26, 1948. A mysterious fog descends upon the valley town of Donora, Pennsylvania. Most of its residents work at the local steel mill and are used to murky air. But there’s something different about this miasma of acrid vapors. People begin to cough convulsively; some have trouble breathing. Residents crowd into local doctors’ offices, some arriving at the doorstep gasping for breath. They wonder, what is happening to us? The fog lifts from the valley 5 days later, leaving 20 people dead. What caused the Donora Death Fog? And how did it lead to the creation of the Clean Air Act?

Special thanks to our guests: Dr. Devra Davis, author of When Smoke Ran Like Water Tales Of Environmental Deception And The Battle Against Pollution; and Brian Charlton, from the Donora Historical Society and Smog Museum. We’d also like to thank Mark Pawelec and David Lonich.

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It Was Said, the 2021 Webby Award winner for Best Podcast Series, returns with a new season to look back on some of the most powerful, impactful, and timeless speeches in history. Written and narrated by Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author-historian Jon Meacham, this documentary podcast series takes you through another season of ten generation-defining speeches. Meacham, along with top historians, authors and journalists, offers expert insight and analysis into the origins, the orator, and the context of the times each speech was given, and they reflect on why it’s important to never forget them. 

It Was Said is a creation and production of Peabody-nominated C13Originals, in association with The HISTORY® Channel.

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October 22, 1975. After traveling millions of miles through space, a Soviet spacecraft plunges through thick clouds of sulfuric acid to land on Venus. Its goal: take a photograph of another planet’s surface and send it back home—history’s first up-close glimpse at a world other than our own. Venus, our closest neighbor, is similar in size to Earth and may even share some planetary material. It’s why scientists sometimes call it our twin planet. Yet its rock-melting temperatures and poisonous atmosphere make it profoundly different. If anything, it is our evil twin. What’s behind humanity's long fascination with Venus? And what can the differences between these cosmic twins teach us about our home planet…its present, and its possible future?

Special thanks to our guests, David Grinspoon, author of Venus Revealed: A New Look Below the Clouds of Our Mysterious Twin Planet, and Sally's twin sister, Eliza Helm. Grinspoon’s latest book is called Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet’s Future.

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October 13, 1982. The announcement came from Switzerland, across the world from where Jim Thorpe was raised on Indian territory in Oklahoma. In his time, Thorpe was the most popular athlete in the world, winning two gold medals at the 1912 Olympics. But for a variety of reasons—including his Native American heritage—those medals were stripped away. But today, though Thorpe passed away years earlier, his children will receive the medals that their father rightly won.

In a special collaboration with our sibling podcast, Sports History This Week, we seek to answer... how does Jim Thorpe rise from an Indian boarding school to become “The Greatest Athlete of All Time"? And why was his legacy almost destroyed?

Special thanks to Sunnie Clahchischiligi, freelance journalist and Ph.D. candidate in Cultural, Indigenous, and Navajo Rhetoric at the University of New Mexico; and David Maraniss, associate editor at the Washington Post and author of Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe.

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October 4, 1915. President Woodrow Wilson designates Dinosaur National Monument as a national historic site. That’s a big deal, right? There must’ve been a grand ribbon-cutting ceremony, maybe even a parade. But no. In 1915, nobody really cares about dinosaurs. But that is all about to change. And when it does, it is largely because of two paleontologists. Two guys who started off as best friends … until their growing obsession with unearthing and cataloging dinosaur bones would turn them into rivals. Then enemies. How did the competition between a pair of paleontologists lead to unprecedented dinosaur discoveries? And how did their rivalry unhinge them both? 

Special thanks to guest Dr. Hans Sues, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. 

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October 1, 1788. William Brodie mounts the gallows outside Edinburgh’s jail. Just a few years before, as a respected member of the town council, he’d helped redesign those gallows. Now he stands upon them as a convicted criminal sentenced to be hanged, in front of 40,000 spectators. Brodie appears surprisingly and resolutely calm. But maybe somewhere deep inside is another William Brodie, panicked and full of regret. Who really was this respectable cabinetmaker by day and thief by night? And how did he inspire his fellow Scotsman, Robert Louis Stevenson, to write the famous story, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

Special thanks to our guests, professors Stephen Brown and Owen Dudley Edwards. Brown’s lecture on the 250th anniversary of the Encyclopedia Britannica is available on the National Library of Scotland's website. Edwards’ latest book is called Our Nations and Nationalisms.

Correction: Professor Brown referred to Judge Braxton in Brodie's trial. The judge's name was Lord Braxfield.

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September 20, 1187. It’s daytime outside the walls of Jerusalem. Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt, ponders his next attack. His troops encircle and lay siege to the city. They vastly outnumber the Crusader knights inside, and Saladin’s on the cusp of a victory he never dreamed possible. He can order his men to attack the city. Killing those who stand in their way and enslaving the rest. But, Saladin has a problem. Balian of Ibelin leads the Crusader defenses within the city walls. He threatens to destroy Muslim holy sites if Saladin attacks. The Sultan must make a choice. One that will impact his legacy, the lives of thousands, and the future of Jerusalem. What does Saladin choose?

Special thanks to our guest, Dr. Suleiman Mourad, Professor of Religion at Smith College and author of Ibn Asakir of Damascus: Champion of Sunni Islam at the Time of the Crusades.

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September 2, 1922. Twenty-four-year-old Mollie Maggia has a toothache. In less than a year, this otherwise healthy young woman will be dead. Others like her will soon follow. They’d all shared what seemed to be a dream job: applying glow-in-the-dark paint to clock faces. The paint glowed because it was saturated with radium, the wonder element of its day. And now that radium has burrowed inside the bones and lungs of the women. How did a supposed wonder element and cure-all come to be seen for what it was – a deadly poison? And how did a group of courageous young women, racing the clock of their own mortality, expose this truth?

Special thanks to Kate Moore, author of The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women. If you want to learn more about the story of The Radium girls you can visit https://www.theradiumgirls.com. Also a huge thank you to Art Fryer, nephew of Grace Fryer, one of the “Radium Girls”.

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September 8, 1966. For the first time, the USS Enterprise appears on screen. It is the premiere of a strange new futuristic TV show. Star Trek will introduce the world to a cast of characters that push the boundaries of TV. Why did NBC take a chance on a writer who had already once gotten them in trouble with none other than the US military? And how did Star Trek go where no show had gone before?

Special thanks to our guests, David A. Goodman and Michelle Sauer. Goodman’s latest film, Honor Society, is now streaming on Paramount Plus. Sauer is the author of Gender in Medieval Culture.

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September 2, 31 BCE. Two camps prepare for battle off the coast of Greece. On one side is Octavian, Julius Caesar’s heir apparent. On the other, Marc Antony and his lover, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. This battle won’t just determine the leader of Rome, but the fate of global civilization. How did Cleopatra wind up in the middle of a Roman game of tug of war? And how did the Battle of Actium change our world forever?

Special thanks to our guest, Barry Strauss, author of The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium.

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August 27, 1900. Dr. Jesse Lazear, a U.S. Army surgeon, walks into Las Animas Hospital Yellow Fever ward in Havana Cuba, toting a brood of mosquitos. He has the system down: remove the cotton stopper that keeps the mosquito penned in its glass vial, turn the vial over, and seal it against a consenting infected patient’s skin. Chasing the source of Yellow Fever, scientists try to understand this deadly plague by running a high-stakes medical experiment on human subjects. But today, those subjects will include themselves. Why did ordinary people—and the doctors running the experiment—willingly and knowingly consent to take part in this study? And when we look back, should we be horrified... or impressed?

Special thanks to our guests: Dr. Kathryn Olivarius of Stanford University and author of, Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom, as well as Molly Crosby author of, The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever the Epidemic That Shaped Our History.

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August 17, 1987. On the red carpet in New York City, it’s the premier of a new movie: Dirty Dancing. The story is set in the sunburnt Shangri-La of New York’s Catskills resort region. The movie will introduce millions to the place that some call the Jewish Alps. "Disneyland with knishes." The Sour Cream Sierras. The Borscht Belt. Ironically, Dirty Dancing arrives as the heyday of the Catskills resort is ending. But how does its culture live on? And how did its signature style of Jewish humor make the leap to Hollywood, where it would fundamentally change American comedy?

Special thanks to our guests: Julie Budd, John Conway, Jeremy Dauber, Elaine Grossinger Etess, Bill Persky, Larry Strickler, and Alan Zweibel. You can learn more about Jewish humor in Dauber’s book, Jewish Comedy: A Serious History.

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August 14, 1967. Off the coast of England, a group of pirate ships has been fighting to stay afloat. These are pirates of a particular kind—less sword fighting and treasure hunting, more spinning records and dancing late into the night. For the past few years, these boats have made it their mission to broadcast popular music from international waters. But at the stroke of midnight, a new law will make these pirate radio DJs criminals. Some of them, aboard Radio Caroline, are willing to risk it. How did a group of young rebels launch an offshore radio station that gave the BBC a run for its money? And how did they change the course of music history?

Special thanks to our guests, former Caroline pirates Nick Bailey, Gordon Cruse, Roger Gale, Patrick Hammerton, Keith Hampshire, Dermot Hoy, Colin Nichol, Paul Noble, Ian Ross, Chris Sandford, and Steve Young.

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August 6, 1991. On an Internet news board, a memo appears, describing a new project that some scientists have been developing: “The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project.” It’s meant to help ordinary people use the Internet—which at the time is only being used by a small group of experts. How did a group of scientists and coders even conceive of something like the Web? And how did they bring it not just to coders and other specialists, but to the rest of us—for better or for worse?

Special thanks to our guests: Robert Cailliau, Jean-François Groff, Peggie Rimmer, Ben Segal, and Marc Weber, Web historian and curator at the Computer History Museum. To learn more about the Web’s story, visit the Internet History Program page on the Museum’s website: computerhistory.org/nethistory.

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7/31/1492. In cities, towns and villages across late medieval Spain, whole districts have emptied out. Houses abandoned, stores closed, and synagogues—which until recently had been alive with singing and prayer—now sit quiet. Exactly four months earlier, the King and Queen of Spain issued an edict: by royal decree, all Jewish people in Spain must convert to Catholicism or leave the country, for good. Why were the Jews expelled from Spain? How did Spaniards, and then the world, start to think of religion as something inherited, not just by tradition, but by blood? And how does this moment help us understand the challenge of assimilation today?

Thank you to our guest, Professor Jonathan Ray from Georgetown University and author of "After Expulsion: 1492 and the Making of Sephardic Jewry" (2013).

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July 21, 1855. Literary lion Ralph Waldo Emerson writes a letter to an unknown Brooklyn journalist named Walt Whitman. He’s just read Whitman’s first published poems, which have both startled him and caused him to rejoice. Emerson congratulates the poet on having produced “the most extraordinary piece of wit & wisdom that America has yet contributed.” So why, just five years later, will Emerson be urging him to delete the “scandalous” passages from a new edition of the poems? And how did Walt Whitman’s exuberant sensuality help recast America’s relationship to the body?

Special thanks to our guests, Karen Karbiener, professor of literature at NYU and president of the Walt Whitman Initiative, and Jerome Loving, author of Emerson, Whitman, and the American Muse and Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself. Karbiener published a new edition of Whitman’s Live Oak, With Moss poems along with illustrator Brian Selznick. You can find out more about the Walt Whitman Initiative’s programming, including efforts to preserve the Whitman home at 99 Ryerson Street, on their website: WaltWhitmanInitiative.org.

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July 13, 44 BCE. Julius Caesar is dead, stabbed by a trusted friend. With Rome shaken, the Senate meets to decide next steps. They're confronting the brutal power struggle already breaking out among three men: Brutus, the deadly friend; Marc Antony, Caesar's gifted military commander; and Octavian, Caesar's teenaged heir. First, Brutus and Octavian will square off with a clash of festivals designed to sway popular opinion to their side... while the wily Antony bides his time. Today, the final day of the Ludi Apollinares, the games that Brutus arranges to sway the people of Rome. Will mounting the wildest spectacle be the key to grabbing the reins of the entire empire? And how does a bolt of lightning reshape Rome's destiny?

Special thanks to Dr. Geoffrey Sumi of Mount Holyoke College, author of Ceremony and Power: Performing Politics in Rome Between Republic and Empire.

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July 7, 2007. In a dramatic ceremony featuring pop stars, fireworks, and smoke canons, the Colosseum is named one of the seven new wonders of the world. It’s an appropriately over-the-top blowout for an arena which, centuries before, was home to its own lavish events. How did spectacles once unfold on the floor of this ancient arena? And how did the Romans use games to entertain people, and to control them?

Special thanks to our guests, Alison Futrell, co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World, and Barry Strauss, author of The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium.

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June 27, 1905. It’s the last morning of Ippolit Gilyarovsky’s life. He wakes up in a battleship on the Black Sea. The Potemkin. He’s a despised Russian naval officer who doesn’t care that his sailors are refusing to eat their lunch of rotten borscht. They’ll do it because he says so. And if they don’t, he’ll hang them. Why did these sailors, many of them peasants accustomed to abuse from high-born men like him, decide on this day to rise up instead and mutiny? And how would their rebellion help take down the Czar of Russia?

Special thanks to our guests; Neal Bascomb, author of Red Mutiny: Eleven Fateful Days on the Battleship Potemkin and Russian Revolution; and historian Dr. Mark Steinberg of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His most recent book is Russian Utopia: A Century of Revolutionary Possibilities.

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June 23, 1972. President Richard Nixon’s men broke into the Watergate complex just six days earlier. He’s attempting some damage control, but in between meetings with his staff, Nixon signs a new bill into law – the Educational Amendments of 1972. He isn’t aware of it at the time, but Title IX of this law will change women’s sports forever. The bill’s passage comes after years of campaigning, and the most prominent face of this movement is one of the great athletes of her era: Billie Jean King. Today, Billie Jean King sits down with Sports History This Week to unpack her role in this monumental legislation. How did she use her platform to fight for gender equality in athletics? And after the passage of Title IX, how did she literally battle for women everywhere?

Special thanks to our guests: Billie Jean King, a champion of tennis and of equality, and Susan Ware, historian and author of Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women's Sports.

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June 23, 1858. A knock at the door—it’s the papal police. For the Mortaras, a Jewish family living in Bologna, this is not a good sign. And soon, the officers break the agonizing news: “You have been betrayed.” The Mortaras’ six-year-old son, Edgardo, has been secretly baptized, and the Church has ordered him to be taken away. Why did the Catholic Church order a young Jewish boy to be kidnapped? And how would that decision end up re-making the map of modern Europe?

Special thanks to our guest, David Kertzer, author of The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara and The Pope at War.

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June 17, 1972. In the early morning hours, five men are caught after breaking into the Watergate building in Washington, DC. The failed break-in that night will eventually lead to the unraveling of a major American scandal that reaches the highest levels of government. Why did President Nixon and the men around him believe that they could get away with something so obviously illegal? And how - for one of our producers - did this episode hit close to home?

Thank you to our guest expert, Michael Dobbs, author of King Richard: An American Tragedy.

Thank you also to Ken Hughes and Michael Greco from The Miller Center at UVA for speaking with us for this episode.

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June 11, 1946. Bayard Rustin walks out of the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary after serving a sentence for conscientiously objecting to WWII. A pacifist organizer, his efforts reach the ears of Mahatma Gandhi, who invites him to India. And Rustin never looks back. Soon he’s mentoring a young Alabama preacher, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as Rustin thrust into the middle of a Civil Rights Movement. But Rustin’s enemies want him gone, and the entire movement along with him. So how does this one man become responsible for the national reach and spread of active nonviolent resistance? And why, as the chief architect of the historic 1963 March on Washington, is his name not more known?

Special thanks to Walter Naegle, Bayard Rustin's partner and the current executor of his estate, and John D'Emilio, professor emeritus of history and gender and women's studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin.

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June 4, 1939. Anna May Wong steps off an ocean liner to greet her fans in Australia. In many ways, she is a classic Hollywood actor. Glamorous and famous. She’s made some sixty movies that have been seen around the world. But in other ways, Anna May Wong is singular. She’s the first–and at this time only–Chinese American movie star. But behind the scenes...she is reaching the end of her rope. How did a Chinese American girl from a poor family defy expectations to become an international star? And what is now fueling her Hollywood rebirth?

Thank you to our guests: Professor Shirley Lim, author of Anna May Wong: Performing the Modern; and actor Michelle Krusiec, from Netflix's "Hollywood."

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May 26, 1965. One hundred years after the Civil War, Congress is debating a bill whose goal is to enforce the 15th amendment, which, in 1870, promised the right to vote regardless of race. But that’s not what happened. Now the Civil Rights movement is saying: It’s time to make real the promises of the Constitution for all Americans. The forces that undermined the First Reconstruction, and gutted the 15th Amendment, are resisting those demands. In the middle stands Lyndon B. Johnson, a Southern Senator with a record of opposing civil rights. Robert Caro, acclaimed journalist and Johnson biographer, tells us, what will change Johnson’s mind and turn him into a champion of the Voting Rights Act? And how will he manage the impossible task of getting it passed when so many Southern Senators are hellbent against it?

Visit History.com/Reconstruction for more.

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In 1935, famed Black sociologist and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois published Black Reconstruction, a revolutionary reassessment of the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War. The book was also a critique of the flawed way others had been telling the story—including leading scholars of the day. Sally Helm sits down with professors Eric Foner and Henry Louis Gates Jr. to discuss Du Bois’ insights. They hone in on his argument that a biased portrayal of Reconstruction was used for over a century to justify the oppression of Black Americans.

Visit History.com/Reconstruction for more.

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May 16, 1868. The Capitol is filled with spectators, anxiously trying to predict how each Senator will vote. It’s the first presidential impeachment trial in American history, and its outcome will have profound effects on Reconstruction, the great project of rebuilding the nation after the Civil War. What made many members of Congress declare President Andrew Johnson unfit to lead that effort? And what motivated this former ally of Abraham Lincoln to declare himself an enemy of true Reconstruction?

Visit History.com/Reconstruction for more.

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May 10, 1865. Jefferson Davis is awakened by gunshots. The president of the defeated and disbanded Confederate States of America is on the run, and today, federal troops finally catch him. His arrest puts the face of the Confederacy behind bars. But it also creates a problem for federal officials: what exactly do we do with this guy? How will they hold Davis accountable for his acts without turning him into a martyr for his cause? And then there’s the larger question: how can they piece a shattered nation back together? 

Visit History.com/Reconstruction for more.

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In this miniseries, HISTORY This Week takes listeners from the Civil War to Civil Rights to uncover the true cost of putting the country back together. Premiering May 9.

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History repeats itself this week with an episode from the HISTORY This Week archives: May 7, 1824. One of the great musical icons in history, Ludwig Van Beethoven, steps onto stage at the Kärntnertor Theater in Vienna. The audience is electric, buzzing with anticipation for a brand new symphony from the legendary composer. But there’s a rumor on their minds, something only a few know for certain... that Beethoven is deaf. He is about to conduct the debut of his Ninth Symphony—featuring the now-famous ‘Ode to Joy’—yet Beethoven can barely hear a thing. How was it possible for him to conduct? And more importantly, how could he have composed one of the greatest works in the history of classical music?

Special thanks to Jan Swafford, author of Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph.

Audio from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is provided courtesy of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and Riccardo Muti Music.

"Beethoven - Piano Concerto No.3, Op.37 - III. Rondo. Allegro" by Stefano Ligoratti is licensed under CC BY 3.0 (https://bit.ly/35uhbRw).

"Beethoven - Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 - IV. Presto - Allegro Assai (For Recorder Ensemble and Chorus - Papalin)" by Papalin is licensed under CC BY 3.0 (https://bit.ly/2YukIxM).

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April 25, 1859. About 150 people have gathered on the shores of Lake Manzala in Egypt. And one of them, a mustachioed, retired French diplomat, steps forward. He raises his pickaxe and strikes a ceremonial blow. The audacious goal is to cut through the desert to connect the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, creating a new trade route between the East and the West. Changing global trade and geopolitics forever. Today: the Suez Canal. Why did the tremendous efforts of a Frenchman end up enriching the British Empire? And how, decades later, did the canal play an unexpected role in the birth of modern Egypt?

​​Thank you to our guests, Ibrahim El-Houdaiby and Professor Aaron Jakes for speaking with us for this episode. Thank you also to Dr. Bella Galil for talking with us. If you want to read more about the Suez Canal, Zachary Karabell's "Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal" is a great resource. 

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April 20, 1812. An angry crowd approaches a mill in Lancashire, England. They’re fed up with what’s happening to their knitting industry, and they’re here to smash the machines taking their jobs. They call themselves the Luddites. Today, their name is invoked when talking about anyone who is anti-technology. But what actually drove this group of knitters to take up arms against their employers? And what does their struggle show us about the relationship between workers and employers today?

Thank you to our guest, Dr. Richard Gaunt from the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.Thank you also to Dr. Kevin Binfield, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in English at Murray State University, for speaking with us for this episode.

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April 16, 1945. Jackie Robinson is ready. He’s won a tryout with the Boston Red Sox, and if he makes the team, he will become the first player to break baseball’s long-standing racial divide. Robinson puts his supreme athletic skills on full display… but never hears back from the Red Sox. The tryout was just for show. It’s not the first deception or indignity that Robinson has endured because of his race. But ultimately, nothing could stop him from breaking baseball’s color line. What does his experience reveal about the history of race in America? And how did Robinson’s life prepare him for his historic achievement?

Special thanks to Howard Bryant, senior writer for ESPN and author of Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field; Ralph Carhart, baseball historian and editor of the upcoming book Not an Easy Tale to Tell: Jackie Robinson on the Page, Stage, and Screen; and Amira Rose Davis, assistant professor of history and African American studies at Penn State and co-host of the sports podcast Burn It All Down and host of season three of American Prodigies: Black Girls in Gymnastics.

Discover the incredible stories of the athletes who continued the change Robinson began on After Jackie, Saturday, 6/18 at 8/7c only on HISTORY.

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April 10, 1912. As the RMS Titanic pulls away from a crowded port on the south coast of England, it almost crashes. Just in time, it’s able to turn off its engines and prevent a collision with a smaller ship. Four days later, though, a serious disaster will not be avoided, and the Titanic’s first voyage will be her last. But during her brief life, the vessel is a microcosm of the Gilded world around her. How did this opulent luxury liner come to exist? And how did it foretell the dangers of wealth, technology, and arrogance that shaped the world around it, and the world we live in now?

Special thanks to our guests, Susie Milar and Gareth Russell, author of The Ship of Dreams: The Sinking of the Titanic and the End of the Edwardian Era.

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March 29, 1951. The world is waiting for the jury’s verdict. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg have been accused of spying for the Soviet Union, conspiring to send atomic secrets to America’s enemy in the Cold War. Ethel and Julius are tried in court together, and after the jury finds both Rosenbergs guilty, they receive the same punishment – the death penalty. But while they were treated the same, these two individuals have very different stories. Today, who was Ethel Rosenberg, the only woman executed for espionage in U.S. history? And why is her guilt still a topic of debate today?

Special thanks to Anne Sebba, author of Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy; Michael and Robert Meeropol, the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; and Steven Usdin, journalist and author of Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley.

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March 5, 2022. After 107 years, explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, has been found two miles under the icy Antarctic waters. Shackleton had set out to be the first to walk across Antarctica, but ran into trouble almost immediately. The Endurance became stuck in the polar ice, which gradually crushed the ship until it sank below the surface. This sparked one of the great survival stories in history, and now that the ship has been discovered, this epic tale is once again coming to light. We sat down with Brad Borkan, an expert on the history of Antarctic exploration to understand who Shackleton was, how his mission evolved, and what we can learn from this groundbreaking discovery.

Don’t forget to tune in to Shackleton’s Endurance: The Lost Ice Ship Found, Tuesday, March 22 at 10/9c on HISTORY.

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March 25, 1965. The US is bombing North Vietnam. On the University of Michigan’s campus, students and professors are gathered for a first-of-its kind protest event. They’re holding a “teach-in,” staying up all night to discuss what’s going on in Vietnam. How did the classroom become a powerful tool for protest? And what impact did this “teach-in” have in shaping the antiwar movement on college campuses—and around the world?

Special thanks to our guests: Zelda Gamson, Alan Haber, Susan Harding, Richard Mann, Stan Nadel, Gayl Ness, Jack Rothman, Howard Wachtel, and Michael Zweig. Thanks also to Ellen Schrecker, author of The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s, and to Greg Kinney at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan.

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March 20, 1953. A middle-aged man named John Christie packs up a suitcase and leaves his apartment in Notting Hill, London. No one knows where he’s gone. But a few days later, people realize why he left… a new tenant makes an unsettling discovery: bodies, hidden in the walls of the kitchen. Today: the case of serial killer John Christie. Why, decades later, are parts of his story still a mystery? And how did that very mystery play into a big change in the UK – the abolition of the death penalty? 

Thank you to our guests: Professor Kate Winkler Dawson, author of the book Death in the Air and the forthcoming book All That is Wicked. Jonathan Oates, author of the book John Christie of Rillington Place: Biography of a Serial Killer. And Sir Julian Knowles, author of The Abolition of the Death Penalty in the United Kingdom; How it Happened and Why it Still Matters. 

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March 12, 1888. There’s been a blizzard in New York. Wind, ice, and snow have brought the city to a halt. Stagecoaches are stuck, elevated trains are frozen. By the time the storm is over, 400 New Yorkers will die. The public outrage is severe, and many blame New York City’s faulty transportation network for the deaths. Suddenly, a solution that had been ignored in the past comes to the forefront – traveling under the earth. Today, the story of the New York City subway. How did an epic snowstorm drive the city to try a dangerous and daring idea? And why was the subway such a unique invention from the very start?

Special thanks to Concetta Bencivenga, director of the New York City Transit Museum; John Morris, author of Subway: The Curiosities, Secrets, and Unofficial History of the New York City Transit System; and Clifton Hood, professor of history at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and author of 722 Miles: The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York.

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March 2, 1955. Claudette Colvin and her classmates are let out early from school. They hop on a bus heading toward downtown Montgomery and sit in the back section, reserved for Black riders. Before long, there’s a white woman standing in the aisle, expecting them to give up their seats. 15-year-old Colvin refuses, and she’s arrested that day—nine months before an almost identical act of defiance from activist Rosa Parks will ignite the Montgomery bus boycott and the modern Civil Rights movement. Who is Claudette Colvin? And how does her story reveal the broader picture behind a protest that would change the nation?

Special thanks to our guests, Nelson Malden; Dr. Kimberley Brown Pellum, author of Black Beauties: African American Pageant Queens in the Segregated South; and Dr. Bettye Collier-Thomas, author of Jesus, Jobs, and Justice: African American Women and Religion. Thanks also to Philip Hoose, author of Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice.

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February 26, 1924. 10 Defendants enter a courtroom in Munich. They are being charged with an attempted coup. They tried to overthrow the government of the Weimar Republic…and almost succeeded. All eyes are on the second defendant to enter the room. When the judge reads this man’s name into the record, he identifies him as a Munich writer named Adolf Hitler. Today: Hitler’s first attempt to seize power. How did his 1923 coup fail? And why would Hitler later say that this failure was “perhaps the greatest good fortune of my life?”

Thank you to Thomas Weber for speaking with us for this episode, author of the book “Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi”. Thank you also to our guest Peter Ross Range, author of “1924: The Year that Made Hitler”. We also read David King’s book “The Trial of Adolf Hitler” in researching this episode–it’s a great resource if you want to learn more about this story.

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Today, we return to a favorite episode from Season 2 in honor of the new three-part documentary, "Abraham Lincoln", premiering on The HISTORY Channel starting Sunday, February 20th, 2022.

February 13, 1861. The city of Washington DC is waiting. Bracing itself. For weeks, there have been threats that this day is going to get violent because pro-slavery voters feel the recently elected president, Abraham Lincoln, is a threat to their way of life. Today, Lincoln is supposed to be affirmed when the electoral votes are counted in the US Capitol building, but on the morning of the count, hundreds of anti-Lincoln rioters storm the building. Their goal: to stop the electoral count. What happened when a mob of anti-Lincoln rioters tried to take over the US Capitol? And how did American democracy handle the test?

Thank you to our guest, Ted Widmer, distinguished lecturer at the Macaulay Honors College at CUNY and author of Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington.

Correction: The Emancipation Proclamation only freed enslaved people in the Confederacy, not throughout the country.

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February 18, 1878. A group of men is leading their horses along a New Mexico mountain trail. This is the Wild West, and danger is never that far away. In fact, before they reach their destination, the leader of their group will be shot. The rest of the cowboys watch the scene unfold in horror, including a future notorious outlaw: Billy the Kid. Over their boss’s dead body, Billy and the others vow to avenge his murder. In the next five months, as much as a quarter of the county's population will be killed. How did this murder turn a community into a battlefield? And what does this conflict reveal about how we understand the Wild West?

Special thanks to Gwendolyn Rogers, president of the Lincoln County Historical Society, and Paul Hutton, whose most recent book, The Apache Wars, tells the story of another war that played out during this time in the Southwest.

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Feb 13, 1920. For over thirty years, Black baseball players have been locked out of the major leagues. So on this day in Kansas City, Rube Foster, a former pitcher and now a team owner, is trying to make his own league just for Black players. He has gathered owners of other Black baseball teams, who currently play each other in one-off matchups or face independent teams in random games around the country. But Foster wants them to get organized, and soon, the Negro National League would be born. But up to this point, how did Black baseball survive after segregation became the unofficial policy of the major leagues? And how did Black players, owners, and managers join together to create something that no baseball fan could ignore?

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February 4, 1955. In a New York courtroom, the Comics Czar takes the stand. He’s in charge of enforcing a new code, meant to keep comic books from corrupting America’s youth, and he’s here to prove that his work has cleaned up the industry. But that afternoon, a noted psychologist named Fredric Wertham argues that his work has not nearly gone far enough. When the hearing comes to a close, the committee is left to decide: what is the future of the comic book? Why did one of the country’s leading psychologists see them as a major threat to American children? And what can the Great Comic Book Scare teach us about moral panics?

Special thanks to our guests, David Hajdu, author of The Ten-Cent Plague, and Jeremy Dauber, author of American Comics.

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History repeats itself this week with an episode from the HISTORY This Week archives: January 27, 1945. Four Russian soldiers arrive at Auschwitz, one of Nazi Germany's largest concentration and extermination camps. The soldiers have come to liberate the survivors inside, but they are not met with the celebration and rejoicing they expect. On this day, what did liberation actually mean for its survivors - and is the full story being forgotten?

Thank you to Mindu Hornick and Bill Harvey for sharing their personal story of surviving Auschwitz and to Fulwell 73 for helping make it happen. Thank you to Jeremy Dronfield, author of the Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz, and to the work of Robert Jan Van Pelt, curator for the international exhibit, "Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away."

Archival material accessed at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of The Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archives of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives & Records Administration and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Thomas P. Headen.

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History repeats itself this week with an episode from the HISTORY This Week archives: January 22, 1984. Apple launches the very first Macintosh computer, unveiling the machine to the public in a showstopping Super Bowl commercial. Not only was the ad itself revolutionary, but the product it launched almost single-handedly brought computers into the mainstream. The Macintosh PC would change technology, and the world as we know it forever.

Special thanks to Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author and producer of the “Making the Macintosh” digital archive.

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History repeats itself this week with an episode from the HISTORY This Week archives: January 15, 1919. Boston PD receives a call: “Send all available rescue personnel...there's a wave of molasses coming down Commercial Street." The bizarre flood decimated Boston's North End. How did it happen? And why does it still affect us all today?

Special thank you to our guest Stephen Puleo, author of Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919.

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History repeats itself this week with an episode from the HISTORY This Week archives: January 8, 1964. In his State of the Union address, Lyndon Johnson unveils his War on Poverty, an effort to tackle subpar living conditions and create jobs across the United States. Johnson discovers that declaring war—even one on an idea—always comes with great costs. Why did LBJ pick poverty as one of his major initiatives? And what issues did he face in waging this war? 

This episode features Doris Kearns Goodwin (presidential historian and executive producer of The HISTORY Channel’s documentary series, Lincoln and Roosevelt) and Guian McKee (associate professor in Presidential Studies at UVA’s Miller Center)."

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In this year-end episode, Sally interviews the rest of the HISTORY This Week team about their favorite stories of the year and the most interesting information that didn’t make it into the episodes. We’ll be bringing you some of our favorite classic History This Week episodes throughout the month of January and will be back with season three in February 2022.

Episode links:

Watergate from the Inside

More Than a Home Run

Pop Music Pirates

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December 24, 1906. It’s Christmas Eve, but inventor Reginald Fessenden is working. Tonight, instead of sending a typical radio message in morse code, he broadcasts something new: music. It's the first in a series of breakthroughs in audio reproduction—a story that takes us from World War II home radios to the acoustics lab of another pioneer: Dr. Amar Bose. How did we get from tapped dots and dashes to the high-quality speakers we use today? This episode comes from the podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz. You can listen to more episodes of Twenty Thousand Hertz at https://apple.co/3pWdq29.

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(EPISODE 100!) December 15, 1979. Two Canadian journalists are hanging out, drinking a beer, when they come up with an idea for a new game to test random knowledge – Trivial Pursuit. But this is far from the first time trivia has been gamified, and to explore the history behind these quizzing contests, we turned to the expert: Jeopardy! legend Ken Jennings. What are the origins of trivia? And what is it about recalling trivial facts that keeps people coming back for more?

Special thanks to Ken Jennings, author of Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs and the host of the podcast Omnibus. Thanks also to Professor Peter Burke, author of What is the History of Knowledge?

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December 11, 1862. Union Army engineers are urgently constructing a bridge, one that will carry soldiers into the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, a Confederate stronghold. Union leaders are banking on the element of surprise and are desperate for a victory. But, by the time it’s over, more than a thousand Union soldiers will perish in one of the worst defeats of the Civil War. How does the failed Battle of Fredericksburg threaten the future of the Emancipation Proclamation and Abraham Lincoln’s very presidency? And how does Lincoln manage to save both?

Special thanks to our guest Professor John Matteson, author of "A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation."

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December 1, 1564. Spanish vessels left a secret port in Mexico about two weeks ago. Their goal: to sail across the Pacific and back, charting a new route for international trade, and giving Spain an edge against its chief colonial rival, Portugal. But today, when a storm hits, the smallest ship is separated from the rest of the fleet. Now, that ship, the San Lucas, is on its own. The following year, when the San Lucas makes it back to Mexico, against all odds, its pilot—a Black mariner—is accused of treason. How did the San Lucas—the smallest ship in the fleet—complete a near-impossible journey that would connect the world? And how did the trailblazing mariner Lope Martín get erased from the story?

Special thanks to our guest, Andrés Reséndez, author of Conquering the Pacific: An Unknown Mariner and the Final Great Voyage of the Age of Discovery.

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November 26, 1970. In Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival, protestors gather under a statue of Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader who had made peace with the Pilgrims, and partook in the legendary Thanksgiving meal. This protest was organized by Wamsutta Frank James, a Wampanoag activist who wanted to draw attention to the full story of Thanksgiving – a story of fear, violence, and oppression that spanned generations. America’s reckoning with the truth of Thanksgiving, James argued, would empower indigenous people to fight for their equal rights. This protest – a National Day of Mourning – continues to this day, now led by James’s granddaughter. So what is the true story of Thanksgiving? And why is it so important for us to remember?

Special thanks to Kisha James, Paula Peters, and David Silverman, author of This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving.

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November 21, 1783. The garden at the Chateau de la Muette is full of expectant Parisians, looking up at the sky. They’re waiting to watch the first two human beings ever take free, untethered flight. After a gust of wind nearly derails the entire operation, some volunteer seamstresses help repair the 75 foot tall hot air balloon. Finally, two Frenchmen step into their wicker baskets and take off. This first human balloon flight is more than just a landmark in aviation history. For the crowds of huddled French masses looking up from below, it's a revolution in and of itself. How did two sons of a papermaker create the first successful aviation device in history? And how did the balloon come to symbolize the French Revolution? 

Special thanks to our guests, Tom Crouch, author of Lighter Than Air: An Illustrated History of Balloons and Airships, and Mi Gyung Kim, author of The Imagined Empire: Balloon Enlightenments in Revolutionary Europe.

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November 11, 1918. At exactly 11 AM local time, the shooting stops. It’s eerily quiet for the first time in a long time. World War I has finally come to an end today after Germany and the Allied nations signed an armistice not long before. The final battle of the war, known today as the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, saw an unexpected turn of events and a surprising victory. Today: the battle that ended the first world war. How did an inexperienced American army help turn the tides? And how did the Meuse-Argonne Offensive change the way America would fight future wars?

Thank you to our guest, Professor Mitchel Yockelson, author of “Forty-Seven Days: How Pershing's Warriors Came of Age to Defeat the German Army in World War I.”

Primary source letter from army doctor Stanhope Bayne-Jones can be found on the website of the Historical Collections of the US National Library of Medicine.

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November 4, 1605. The king's men are conducting a search. They're making their way through the storerooms and cellars and vaults that cluster around and beneath the Palace of Westminster. They've gotten a tip in the form of a mysterious, anonymous letter that something bad is going to happen at the House of Lords tomorrow. And shortly before midnight, they find a ton of firewood, a suspicious man, and 36 barrels of gunpowder. What brought a group of conspirators together in a plot to kill the king? And in the 400 years since, how has an annual celebration of the failed plot, and the story of one of the plotters—Guy Fawkes—come to stand for something else entirely?

Special thanks to our guests: James Sharpe, author of Remember Remember: A Cultural History of Guy Fawkes Day, and Mark Nicholls, author of Investigating Gunpowder Plot.

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October 28, 1895. It’s the first day of a murder trial in Philadelphia, and H.H. Holmes has been left to represent himself. His lawyers say they haven’t had time to prepare for his case, although they may just want to avoid defending the man some newspapers are already saying is “sure to grace a gallows.” Holmes has been accused of murdering his business associate, but rumors swirl that he may have killed dozens, even hundreds more. And even a century later, some still call him "America's first serial killer." But how did H.H. Holmes earn this reputation? And why is it so hard to learn the truth about this legendary fiend?

Special thanks to Adam Selzer, author of H.H. Holmes: The True Story of the White City Devil, and Harold Schechter, professor emeritus of literature at Queens College and author of Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America's First Serial Killer.

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October 11, 1995. Professor Mario Molina is at his desk at MIT when he gets a long distance call from Sweden. It’s the Nobel Committee, telling him he’s won that year’s prize in chemistry, making this chemistry prize the first awarded to a Mexican-born scientist and the first recognizing environmental science work. The Nobel Committee thanks Molina and the other winners for having "contributed to our salvation from a global environmental problem that could have catastrophic consequences." How did two scientists with no background in atmospheric chemistry identify a dangerous, invisible reaction that was putting the planet in peril? And why was the whole world able to pull together to prevent the worst?

Special thanks to our guests, Don Blake, Richard Stolarski, and A.R. Ravishankara, and to the Science History Institute for sharing its oral history interview with Mario Molina.

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October 4, 1938. Soviet pilot Marina Raskova beats a world record: the longest continuous flight ever recorded by a woman. She'll soon break another barrier-- she'll lead the first-ever female air force pilots to fly on the front lines of World War Two. One of her regiments in particular will wreak havoc on Nazi German soldiers and become the most notorious night bombers in the entire Soviet Union. They'll become known as the Night Witches. Who were these barrier-breaking pilots? And how did they become some of the most feared forces on the Eastern front?

Thank you to our guests, Claudia Hagen, author of "Tonight We Fly!" The Soviet Night Witches of WWII, and to Christer Bergström, author of "Black Cross Red Star - Air War over the Eastern Front: Volume 1 Operation Barbarossa."

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October 1, 1904. Show up at a newsstand this morning, and you'll see that the October issue of McClure's magazine has hit the shelves. Alongside it, newspapers advertise what’s inside: "Ida M. Tarbell renders her final judgment of Rockefeller's Trust." It’s the 19th and last installment in a series that has made people sit up and take notice of a powerful monopoly and the man behind it. How did a scrappy reporter take on the richest man in the country? And how, in the process, did she change corporate America and investigative journalism itself?

Special thanks to our guests, Stephanie Gorton, author of Citizen Reporters: S. S. McClure, Ida Tarbell, and the Magazine that Rewrote America; Kathleen Brady, author of Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker; and Steve Weinberg, author of Taking on the Trust: How Ida Tarbell Brought Down John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil.

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September 24, 1902. A new cooking school is set to open at Boston’s 30 Huntington Avenue. The rooms will soon be filled with trainee cooks, who will watch in awe as the school’s namesake and principal, Fannie Farmer, lectures on everything from boning meats to baking the perfect reception rolls. Farmer is an innovative cook, and a pioneer in a thriving women's culinary movement known as "domestic science." But her school stands at a crossroads of that very movement and begs the question, what is the purpose of food? Who was Fannie Farmer, “the mother of level measurements”? And how did she shape the way we cook and eat today?

Special thanks to our guests, Laura Shapiro, author of Perfection Salad; Danielle Dreilinger, author of The Secret History of Home Economics; and Anne Willan, author of Women in the Kitchen.

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September 15, 1893. About 4,000 people are intently listening to a monk on a stage in Chicago. They’re at an event called Parliament of the World’s Religions – an unprecedented gathering of leaders from many different faiths all over the world, held at the Chicago World's Fair. The monk is Hindu from Bombay India and is telling a mostly Protestant American audience a story that is not planned and certainly not what the Protestant organizers were expecting. What happened when tension among religious leaders unfolded in front of thousands of American spectators? And how did this Parliament help broaden the country’s understanding of religion?

Thank you to our guests, Scholar of Religion and Professor Eric Ziolkowski from Lafayette College and Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies Diana Eck from Harvard University. Thank you also to Richard Hughs Seager, author of "The World's Parliament of Religions; The East/West Encounter, Chicago 1892."

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Episode 1: The Bullet. The 9/11 attacks were so much more than a bolt from the blue on a crisp September morning. They were more than a decade in the making. Our story starts in a Midtown Manhattan hotel ballroom in 1990. Shots ring out and the extremist rabbi, Meir Kahane, lies mortally wounded. His assassin, El-Sayyid Nosair, is connected to members of a Brooklyn mosque who are training to fight with Islamic freedom fighters in Afghanistan. NYPD Detective Louis Napoli and FBI Special Agent John Anticev catch the case and start unraveling a conspiracy that is taking place in plain sight by blending into the tumult of the city. It is animated by an emerging ideology: violent jihad.

More about the Blindspot: Road to 9/11:

While the devastating images of the 9/11 attacks are seared into our national collective memory, most of the events that led up to that day took place out of public view. Over eight episodes, Blindspot: The Road to 9/11, brings to light the decade-long “shadow struggle” that preceded the attacks. Hosted by WNYC reporter Jim O’Grady and based on The HISTORY® Channel's television documentary Road to 9/11 (produced by Left/Right), this podcast series draws on interviews with more than 60 people — including FBI agents, high-level bureaucrats, journalists, experts, and people who knew the terrorists personally — and weaves them together with original reporting to create a gripping, serialized narrative audio experience. Blindspot: The Road to 9/11 is a co-production of The HISTORY® Channel and WNYC Studios.

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History repeats itself this week with an episode from the HISTORY This Week archives: Sept 5, 1698. Tsar Peter the Great of Russia returns home from a year-long European tour. When noblemen, religious figures and friends gather to welcome him home, Peter pulls out a straight razor, holds it to their throats, and…forcibly shaves their beards. This event will go down in history as a first step towards Russian geopolitical power. Before Peter’s reign, Russia was an isolated nation that was largely ignored by the rest of the world. How did Peter the Great almost single-handedly drag Russia onto the world stage? And how did his great beard-shaving endeavor lead to the Russia we know today?

Special thank you to our guest Lynne Hartnett, Ph.D., professor of History, Villanova University and Understanding Russia: A Cultural History.

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August 24, 1914. A train pulls up to the lumber town of White River, Ontario, carrying a regiment of Canadian troops on board. On the tracks where they disembark is a small black bear cub. An army veterinarian decides to buy the bear and name her Winnipeg—Winnie for short—after the town where he's been living. When the soldiers are deployed to the European front, Winnie is left at the London Zoo, where a child named Christopher Robin Milne will meet her. He'll later rename his own teddy bear after her: Winnie-the-Pooh. How did a real-life boy and a real-life bear inspire some of the world's most famous literary characters? And what impact did these stories ultimately have on the people who helped bring them to life?

Special thanks to Ann Thwaite, whose most recent book about Milne and Winnie-the-Pooh is titled Goodbye Christopher Robin: A.A. Milne and the Making of Winnie-the-Pooh.

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August 21, 1911. On a Monday morning, a department store employee on a Paris street sees a man hurrying by. He carries a white-wrapped package and, as the employee watches, he throws something small and shiny over his shoulder...it’s a doorknob. Then the man disappears into the streets of Paris. That store employee has just witnessed a small part of what will soon become the world’s most famous crime. In that white-wrapped package was...the Mona Lisa. Why has the Mona Lisa enchanted so many people since the 1500s? And how did a struggling Italian handyman manage to steal it?

Thank you to our guests, Martin Kemp, author of Mona Lisa. The People and the Painting, and Dr. Noah Charney, founder of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

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August 14, 1967. Off the coast of England, a group of pirate ships has been fighting to stay afloat. These are pirates of a particular kind—less sword fighting and treasure hunting, more spinning records and dancing late into the night. For the past few years, these boats have made it their mission to broadcast popular music from international waters. But at the stroke of midnight, a new law will make these pirate radio DJs criminals. Some of them, aboard Radio Caroline, are willing to risk it. How did a group of young rebels launch an offshore radio station that gave the BBC a run for its money? And how did they change the course of music history?

Special thanks to our guests, former Caroline pirates Nick Bailey, Gordon Cruse, Roger Gale, Patrick Hammerton, Keith Hampshire, Dermot Hoy, Colin Nichol, Paul Noble, Ian Ross, Chris Sandford, and Steve Young.

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August 2, 1915. The poem appears in print for the first time this week, from Kentucky to Pennsylvania to Vermont. Every reader is transported to that same leafy path: “two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost becomes an immediate hit and will go on to become one of the most popular and well-known poems in American history. For many, it's about a spirit of individualism -- forging one’s own path. And yet… Robert Frost may have had a completely different meaning in mind. What—or who—inspired Frost to write this iconic poem? And what is it really telling us about how to make a choice?

Thank you to our guests, Professor Jay Parini, author of "Robert Frost: A Life," and Professor David Orr, author of " The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong."

Thank you also to Middlebury College Special Collections, Middlebury, Vermont for their 1953 recording of Robert Frost reading "The Road Not Taken".

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August 1, 1936. The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Adolf Hitler enters the stadium to a militaristic Wagner march. Swastikas flutter everywhere on the flag of the Nazi Party. When these moments are remembered later, one athlete’s name comes up more than any other: Jesse Owens. He’s a Black American sprinter, a legendary athlete, and one of 18 Black Americans who competed in Hitler’s Olympics. How, through these 1936 Games, does this one man become mythologized? And what is the forgotten context of his storied Olympic wins?

Special thanks to Damion Thomas, curator of sports for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture; Deborah Riley Draper, director and writer of Olympic Pride, American Prejudice; and Mark Dyreson, director of research and educational programs for the Penn State Center for the Study of Sports in Society.

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July 19, 64 AD. The Circus Maximus is the main arena in ancient Rome at this time, where tens of thousands watch chariot races and gladiator fights. The stadium is surrounded by shops and bars and restaurants, the whole area teeming with life. And tonight, it will all be destroyed. Nero, the emperor of Rome, will allegedly fiddle while he watches his city burn, and may have even set the fire himself. But if you look at the story a little closer, some of the details just don’t add up. So, what is really true about Nero? And how did a story that was essentially fake news last for 2,000 years?

Special thanks to Anthony Barrett, author of Rome Is Burning: Nero and the Fire That Ended a Dynasty.

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July 15, 1799 (approximately). In the town of Rashid on the Nile Delta, French soldiers and Egyptian laborers are rebuilding an old, falling-down fort, when someone spots something unusual. It’s a jagged black rock, inscribed with what looks like three different types of writing. This stone—the Rosetta Stone—will become the key to deciphering a language that had been lost for thousands of years. Today: the race to unlock the secrets of hieroglyphs. How did two scholars manage to decode a language that no one in the world spoke? And when modern people could finally read the messages left by a long-dead civilization, what were we able to learn?

Special thanks to our guest, Edward Dolnick, whose book, The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone, comes out in October 2021.

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June 28, 1971. It’s the second annual “Unity Day” rally at Columbus Circle in New York City, organized by the Italian American Civil Rights League. Joe Colombo is the very public face of the League, a group that actively fights discrimination and ugly stereotypes against the Italian-American community, such as their association with organized crime and the Mafia. The problem? That same Joe Colombo is a leader of the Mafia, one of the heads of the “Five Families” in New York. It’s an open secret; many people across the city know who he really is, and the FBI is hot on his tail, trying to catch him in the act. On this day, Colombo’s dual life—as a media-facing advocate and as an underground criminal—will come crashing down in a violent display.

Special thanks to Don Capria, co-author of Colombo: The Unsolved Murder; Selwyn Raab, veteran Mafia reporter and author of Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires; and Geoff Schumacher, vice president of exhibits and programs for the Mob Museum in Las Vegas.

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June 21, 1998. Father's Day. At the Church of the Atonement in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, Jon and Michael Galluccio are ready to tie the knot, in front of family, friends, reporters, and one lone picketer. The Galluccios are already public figures—a few months earlier, they had secured the right for gay and unmarried couples to jointly adopt children. And today, they pull up to their wedding in a minivan, with their son in tow: as a family. How did this family come together? And how did their son's adoption end up changing the lives of other families all across the country?

Special thanks to our guests, Jon and Michael Galluccio. Their book is called An American Family.

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June 17, 1972. In the early morning hours, five men are caught after breaking into the Watergate building in Washington, DC. The failed break-in that night will eventually lead to the unraveling of a major American scandal that reaches the highest levels of government. Why did President Nixon and the men around him believe that they could get away with something so obviously illegal? And how - for one of our producers - did this episode hit close to home?

Thank you to our guest expert, Michael Dobbs, author of King Richard: An American Tragedy.

Thank you also to Ken Hughes and Michael Greco from The Miller Center at UVA for speaking with us for this episode.

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June 10, 1692. Bridget Bishop is loaded into a two-wheeled cart and brought from her Salem jail cell to a pasture on a hill, where a rope is hanging from freshly-installed gallows. A crowd forms around her: law officers to read the death warrant, ministers to offer last rites, and onlookers, curious to see a witch in the flesh. Bishop’s execution raises doubts that could have stopped the Salem witch trials in their tracks. But instead, it became the first in a deluge of convictions, trials, and hangings that made the summer of 1692 go down in infamy. What happened that summer to cause a witch hunt? And what can we learn from the story of 19 supposed witches condemned to death?

Special thanks to our guest, Marilynne Roach, author of The Salem Witch Trials: a Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege.

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May 30, 1921. Dick Rowland, a Black teenager, works as a shoeshine in the predominantly white downtown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. On his break, he goes into a nearby office building to use the restroom, and gets on the elevator. Sarah Page, a white teenager, is the elevator operator. What happens next is just an innocent accident, but it sparks the deadliest episode of racial violence in American history. What was the story behind Greenwood, the Tulsa neighborhood known as “Black Wall Street?” And why was it decimated on one horrific night?

Special thanks to Kalenda Eaton, professor of Africana Literature at the University of Oklahoma, and Kendra Field, professor of history at Tufts University and author of Growing Up with the Country: Family, Race, and Nation after the Civil War.

And for more history around the end of Reconstruction, listen to our episode from November 2, 2020, "Stealing the Presidency."

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May 29, 1851. Akron, Ohio’s Old Stone Church is packed to the brim. It's the second day of a big convention on women's rights. Hundreds of activists are there, but when one of them, Sojourner Truth, takes the floor, she stands out. Truth is a formerly enslaved woman, and her speech reminds the crowd that women’s rights includes the rights of working women, of Black women, and of women who are now enslaved. But this speech would be manipulated throughout history, and Truth herself boiled down to a fictionalized slogan. How did this feminist and anti-slavery activist get turned into a symbol? And what parts of the person got lost in that process? Who was Truth, really?

Special thanks to our guest, Nell Irvin Painter, author of Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol.

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May 20, 2004. A lawyer named Brandon Mayfield walks out of a Portland, Oregon courtroom a free man. About two weeks earlier, Mayfield was arrested by the FBI because they thought they had his fingerprint on a key piece of evidence in the investigation of a terrorist train bombing in Madrid, Spain earlier that year. But by this afternoon in May, that key evidence has completely fallen apart. Today: a case of mistaken identity. Why did the FBI arrest the wrong man? And how did this case change forensic science for good?

Thank you to our guests, Professor Simon Cole from UC Irvine, Steven Wax, author of Kafka Comes to America: Fighting for Justice in the War on Terror - A Public Defender's Inside Account, and Brandon Mayfield.

Thank you also to Judge Jones and former FBI agent Robert Jordan for speaking with us.

If you're interested in reading the Inspector General's Report cited, you can find it here: https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/s0601/PDF_list.htm

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May 10, 1869. On the dusty, barren plains of Promontory Summit, Utah, a crowd is gathered to celebrate an American milestone – the completion of the transcontinental railroad, the first piece of infrastructure to connect the two sides of the United States. But this achievement didn’t come without great sacrifice, especially from Chinese immigrants, who made up more than 90% of the Central Pacific Railroad company workforce. How did these workers come to build what might be the most important transportation project in US history? And how were these Chinese immigrants accepted by American society, before the tides turned to violence and hate?

Special thanks to Gordon Chang, professor of history at Stanford University and author of Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad (https://amzn.to/3hgDtOH).

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May 9, 1905. After weeks of illness and visits from ten different doctors, Anna Jarvis’s mother dies. In the days that follow, Jarvis makes a promise to herself: to fulfill her mother’s dream of creating a holiday devoted to celebrating mothers. Her campaign to create and define Mother’s Day would become her life’s work, and also her downfall. How did Anna Jarvis become a minor celebrity known for her fanatical devotion to this annual holiday? And why did she come to hate the holiday she created?

Special thanks to Katharine Antolini, author of Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis and the Struggle for Control of Mother’s Day.

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April 30, 1977. Nearly a month after entering San Francisco’s Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, a group of 150 demonstrators is going home. They’re singing, drinking champagne, and hugging the friends they’ve slept alongside for weeks on a cold office floor. Many of these activists are people with disabilities, and they’ve been sitting in to push the government to sign regulations that have sat untouched for years. What happened when a group of activists with disabilities staged the longest peaceful occupation of a federal building in US history? And how did this protest change accessibility in America?

Special thanks to our guests, Judy Heumann, Corbett O’Toole, Dennis Billups, and Debby Kaplan. Lucy Muir audio tapes courtesy of Ken Stein. Daniel Smith and Queer Blue Light Videotapes courtesy of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society.

Click here for a transcript of this episode: https://bit.ly/3tLEXEc.

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April 19, 1951. General Douglas MacArthur's plane touches down in DC just after midnight. He’s coming home from fighting the Korean War. Over twelve thousand people are there to greet this person who the American people consider to be a national war hero. It’s quite the welcome for a general who has just been fired by the President of the United States. How, after this triumphant return, does the general end up losing his own party's political support? And could MacArthur have led his country into a nuclear war?

Thank you to our guests: Professor H.W. Brands, author of The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War, and Professor David Kang, the director of the Korean Studies Institute at USC. Thank you also to Professor James Matray for speaking with us for this episode.

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April 18, 1933. It’s almost midnight in Washington, DC. Newly-elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt has gathered his economic advisors for a late-night meeting. He called this meeting to announce his plan to effectively take the US off the gold standard, the system by which every paper dollar is tied to a certain amount of literal gold. To his advisors, this is inconceivable. Money is gold. Without gold backing the dollar, what even is money in the first place? But the president is resolute. The gold standard has driven America into the Great Depression, and he plans to drag it back out. How did FDR’s decision change the way Americans conceived of money? And how did killing the gold standard save the country?

Special thanks to our guest, Jacob Goldstein, host of the podcast Planet Money and author of Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing.

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April 8, 1974. On a humid night in Atlanta, Hank Aaron is poised to make history. On the all-time home run leaderboard, Aaron is tied with the legendary Babe Ruth. With one swing of the bat, he can break Ruth’s record. But not everyone in America wants to see this happen; the threats against Aaron’s life have warranted FBI protection. Yet in front of 54,000 people in Atlanta and millions more watching at home, Aaron steps up to bat. What was it like to be a Black baseball superstar twenty-five years after Jackie Robinson broke the sport's color barrier? And what is the real story—of threats, fear, and danger—behind Aaron’s record-breaking game?

Special thanks to Howard Bryant, senior writer for ESPN and author of The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron, and Bob Kendrick, President of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

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April 3, 1974. Across America, many people wake up this morning thinking it will be a normal day. But in the next 24 hours, almost 150 tornadoes will hit the United States. It will be then the largest tornado outbreak in the nation's history. Why did so many deadly tornadoes hit on this one day? And how did it spur life-saving changes that are still with us decades later?

Thank you to our guests Greg Forbes, former severe weather expert with the Weather Channel, and Atmospheric Sciences professor, Jeff Trapp, from the University of Illinois.

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March 20, 1703. Today, almost fifty men, scattered around the city of Edo, Japan, are waiting to die. They’re all former samurai who had served the same lord – and they all carried out a deadly revenge attack in his name. Their story will go down in history as the legend of the 47 Ronin. Why did these men decide that to be loyal samurai, they had to die? And how did this moment live on for centuries and become part of the national story of Japan?

Thank you to our guest, Professor John Tucker, author of "The Forty-Seven Ronin: The Vendetta in History" and "Kumazawa Banzan: Governing the Realm and Bringing Peace to All below Heaven."

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March 9, 1901. From a jail cell in Topeka, Kansas, temperance vigilante Carry Nation is hard at work. After her latest arrest for smashing up a bar with her infamous hatchet, Nation decides to spread her message with paper and ink. The first issue of The Smasher’s Mail would be published on this day, with Nation arranging the entire endeavor from behind bars. The newsletter was only a small part of her crusade against “hell-broth,” which included everything from destroying saloons to starring in her own burlesque shows. But when considering how alcohol altered her life’s journey, were her methods really all that extreme?

Special thanks to Fran Grace, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Redlands and author of Carry A. Nation: Retelling the Life.

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March 2, 1923. In Wichita, Kansas, Mary Irby and Euna Hollowell are being held at the county jail. The two women are charged with “lewdly abiding.” Translation: officials suspect them of carrying a sexually transmitted infection. Hollowell, Irby, and many women like them will go on to be forcibly examined and incarcerated under a public health program known as “The American Plan.” This initiative resulted in decades of mass incarceration of tens of thousands of American women. How was it possible for the U.S. government to publicly wage war on women? And how did those women fight back?

Special thank you to our guest Scott W. Stern, author of The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, Surveillance, and the Decades-Long Government Plan to Imprison "Promiscuous" Women.

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February 26, 1917. At the Victor Talking Machine Company’s studio in Manhattan, five white men gathered to record the first jazz record in history. The Original Dixieland Jass Band’s release was a hit, introducing many listeners across America to this genre for the first time. These musicians even claimed that they invented jazz, but that was far from the truth. Why was jazz, an artform pioneered by black musicians, introduced to the world by an all-white band? And who were the true pioneers who could have made the first jazz record?

Special thanks to Damon J. Phillips, Columbia Business School professor and author of Shaping Jazz: Cities, Labels, and the Global Emergence of an Art Form, and Kevin Whitehead, jazz critic for NPR’s Fresh Air and author of Play the Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film.

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February 15, 1965. Walgett, Australia. A group of about 30 Sydney students has traveled here on a fact-finding mission – a mission they’ll call a Freedom Ride, inspired by the efforts of Civil Rights activists in America. They’re here to document the unequal treatment of Aboriginal members in Walgett. But after being kicked out of town, their bus is run off the road, and the students brace themselves to face their attackers waiting in the night. How did the U.S. Civil Rights movement spark a wave of student activism on the other side of the world? And how did this dramatic confrontation help catapult this student protest to national importance, changing Australian society forever?

Thank you to our guests: Ann Curthoys, student Freedom Rider and Professor Emeritus at ANU; and ANU School of History Professor, Peter Read, author of “Charles Perkins: A Biography."

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February 13, 1861. The city of Washington DC is waiting. Bracing itself. For weeks, there have been threats that this day is going to get violent because pro-slavery voters feel the recently elected president, Abraham Lincoln, is a threat to their way of life. Today, Lincoln is supposed to be affirmed when the electoral votes are counted in the US Capitol building, but on the morning of the count, hundreds of anti-Lincoln rioters storm the building. Their goal: to stop the electoral count. What happened when a mob of anti-Lincoln rioters tried to take over the US Capitol? And how did American democracy handle the test?

Thank you to our guest, Ted Widmer, distinguished lecturer at the Macaulay Honors College at CUNY and author of "Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington."

Correction: The Emancipation Proclamation only freed enslaved people in the Confederacy, not throughout the country.

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February 1, 1960. Four young Black men, David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Jibreel Khazan and Joseph McNeil gather outside the Woolworth department store in Greensboro, North Carolina. All four are college freshman, and they have come downtown with a single purpose: to desegregate the department store, one of the most visible embodiments of racism and segregation in America. These teenagers stage a sit in that sparks a youth movement across the nation and reignites the sputtering Civil Rights Movement. How exactly did the Greensboro sit-ins come together? And why did this particular protest spread like wildfire?

Special thank you to our guest, Dr. Traci Parker Associate Professor at University of Massachusetts at Amherst and author of Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement.

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January 25, 1908. Harry Houdini is the most famous magician in America. He’s known for his escapes – from handcuffs, boxes, jail cells, even a giant football. But the escape act is getting old, and ticket sales aren’t what they used to be. And on this day, an under-capacity audience at the Columbia Theater in St. Louis is about to witness Houdini’s most dangerous escape yet… from death itself. How did a Hungarian immigrant named Erik Weisz become Harry Houdini? And when his career was fading, how did Houdini embrace death to bring it back to life?

Special thanks to our guest, Joe Posnanski (author of The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini). Additional thanks to San Diego magician Tom Interval for providing archival audio of Houdini.

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January 6, 2021. As Congress voted to affirm Joe Biden as the incoming president, rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to thwart the election certification. This insurrection shook the nation to its core, forcing many to question the steadfastness of nearly 250 years of democratic rule. In this special episode, we asked historians to join a discussion about where this moment stands in American history, and what we can learn from the past to show us a path forward.

This episode features Sharron Conrad (postdoctoral fellow at SMU’s Center for Presidential History), Beverly Gage (professor of American history and director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University), and Steve Gillon (scholar-in-residence at The History Channel and professor of history at the University of Oklahoma).

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January 23, 1907. The Kansas legislature has convened to decide who will be the next US Senator from their state. The vote shakes out as everyone expected: front-runner Charles Curtis wins the seat. Curtis – a member of the Kaw Nation – has just become the first person of color elected to the Senate and will go on to rise even further as Vice President of the United States. This week, Kamala Harris follows Curtis as the second person of color to fill that seat. However, his legacy is a complicated one. How did Charles Curtis rise so high during an era that was arguably the height of American white supremacy? And what does his flawed political legacy tell us about the complexities of representation? 

Special thank you to our guest, Brett Chapman.

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January 15, 1535. King Henry VIII has a decree. As of today, he is “the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England". Which means: the Pope is no longer head of the Church in England for the first time in history. And why? All because of a woman named Anne Boleyn. King Henry VIII moves heaven and earth to marry the woman he loves, but just a thousand days later he will have her executed. Why did he do it? And how is the story we always tell about Anne Boleyn all wrong?

Thank you to our guest, Claire Ridgway, the author of TheAnneBoleynFiles.com.

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SEASON TWO PREMIERE – January 8, 1964. In his State of the Union address, Lyndon Johnson unveils his War on Poverty, an effort to tackle subpar living conditions and create jobs across the United States. Johnson discovers that declaring war—even one on an idea—always comes with great costs. Why did LBJ pick poverty as one of his major initiatives? And what is the legacy of the war he started?

This episode features Doris Kearns Goodwin (presidential historian and executive producer of The HISTORY Channel’s forthcoming documentary series, Lincoln and Roosevelt) and Guian McKee (associate professor in Presidential Studies at UVA’s Miller Center).

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December 28, 2020. In this year-end recap, Sally sits down with HISTORY This Week producers McCamey Lynn, Julie Magruder and Ben Dickstein to discuss their favorite episodes from 2020 and bonus info that didn’t make it into the episodes. Plus, we’ll hear researcher Emma Frederick’s favorite facts from a year’s worth of deep dives. You can find the links to all relevant episodes below. We’re back next week to kick off Season 2 with a very special guest. 

Special thank you to our guests in this episode, Jackie Logan and John Uri.

Episode links:

Houston We've Had a Problem

Surviving Auschwitz

The Inca's Last Stand

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December 18, 1970. Decades after the end of WWII a Nazi doctor is on trial. Today is judgment day in a long, difficult legal battle, but this case isn’t about war crimes. The German pharmaceutical company Grunenthal is charged with the worst medical disaster in history: the Thalidomide scandal. The shoddily tested and hastily approved drug made its way into medicine cabinets around the world, and a decade after its release, the reality is becoming clear: Thalidomide is killing babies. Who are the heroes that brought down Thalidomide? And how did this disaster change pharmaceutical regulations forever?

Special thanks to our guest Michael Magazanik, author of Silent Shock.

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December 11, 1936. Just yesterday, King Edward VIII of England officially abdicated the throne. And tonight, some ten million people will hear the reason from the man himself. He tells the country in a radio address, “I have found it impossible to carry a heavy burden of responsibility, and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do, without the help and support of the woman I love”. This “woman” is a twice-divorced American. The country is shocked. Edward VIII has become the first monarch to voluntarily abdicate the throne in British history. How did Edward VIII cause trouble for England before, during, and after his reign? And how does his legacy continue to shape the fate of the royals to this day?

Thank you to our guests:

Adrian Phillips, author of "The King Who Had to Go: Edward Vlll, Mrs Simpson and the Hidden Politics of the Abdication Crisis"

Anna Pasternak, author of "The Real Wallis Simpson: A New History of the American Divorcée Who Became the Duchess of Windsor'

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December 2, 1943. World War II is raging throughout Europe, but in the Allied port city of Bari, Italy, things have remained relatively quiet. The Allies are offloading tanks, guns and other equipment when on this night, the Nazis attack. They bomb the port, killing 2,000 soldiers and civilians, and sinking 28 Allied ships. One of those ships holds a secret cargo, a chemical weapon that leaks into the harbor where soldiers are swimming for their lives. What happened when those soldiers were exposed to this deadly toxin? And how did the investigation of this incident revolutionize the way we treat cancer?

Special thanks to Jennet Conant, author of The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster that Launched the War on Cancer

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November 24, 1966. Millions of spectators flood Broadway in New York City to watch the Macy’s Day Parade on Thanksgiving morning. The iconic floats – Superman, Popeye, Smokey the Bear – are set against a grey sky that can only be described as noxious. A smog of pollutants is trapped over New York City, and it will ultimately kill nearly 200 people. How did the 1966 Thanksgiving Smog help usher in a new era of environmental protection? And how have we been thinking about environmental disasters all wrong?

Special thanks to our guest Professor Frank Uekotter, author of The Age of Smoke.

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November 16, 1532. Atahualpa, the king of the Inca Empire, marches towards the city of Cajamarca in modern-day Peru, surrounded by 80,000 soldiers. Once he arrives, Atahualpa expects the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro to surrender in the town square. But Pizarro has a plan of his own. With just 168 men, he will unleash a trap that destroys the Inca Empire, and brings thousands of years of indigenous rule to a violent end. What was happening in the Andes before Pizarro arrived that allowed this to take place? And when history is written by the victors, how do we know what’s really true?

Special thanks to Professor R. Alan Covey, author of "Inca Apocalypse: The Spanish Conquest and the Transformation of the Andean World" (https://bit.ly/2UhbbXw)

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November 10, 1969. It’s a Monday. Across the US, parents and babysitters and grandparents and aunts and uncles are turning on the TV, because there's a new show out today for kids: Sesame Street. The show has now been on the air for more than 50 years. It’s been viewed by 80 million Americans, and it’s aired in 120 countries. Some people call it the most influential show in the history of TV. How was Sesame Street born? And how did it help change the way millions of children learn?

Thank you to our guest, Michael Davis, author of "Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street."

Thank you also to Sesame Street, whose 51st season releases November 12th, 2020 on HBO Max. Sesame Street excerpts provided courtesy of Sesame Workshop, New York, New York.

© 2020 Sesame Workshop. Sesame Street® and associated characters, trademarks and design elements are owned and licensed by Sesame Workshop. All Rights Reserved.

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November 7, 1876. A little before midnight on election night, the Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes admits defeat and goes to bed. The Democrat Samuel J. Tilden has swept the electoral college, and by morning, he will almost certainly have the votes he needs to win the presidency. But overnight, the Republicans manage to change their fate and go on to steal the election. How did a one-legged Civil War veteran, a handful of telegrams and some of the filthiest politics in American history flip the election? And how did Hayes’ fateful compromise with the Democrats set back suffrage for over a century?

Special thanks to Dr. Richard White, Professor Emeritus of American History and author of The Republic for Which It Stands.

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October 27, 1962. 72,000 feet above Cuba, an American U2 spy plane flies over the island, capturing photo intelligence. It’s been 13 days since the CIA discovered Soviet nuclear missiles stationed in Cuba, pointed directly at the US. Soviet defense forces on the ground catch the spy plane on their radar. They name it Target Number 33. The lower-level Soviet officers are getting nervous that this spy is capturing critical intelligence. Unable to reach their general, they make the call: destroy Target Number 33. In that moment, the pilot becomes the first casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis. How, at the peak of the Cold War, did a combination of political choices and bad luck push the world to the brink of nuclear war? And how did leadership, diplomacy and chance pull us back to safety?

Thank you to our guest, Michael Dobbs, author of "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War"

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