HistoryPod
1,362 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 7 hours ago - ★★★★ - 234 ratingsThe 'on this day in history' podcast, with a new episode every single day. Featuring historical events that range from the Roman Empire to the World Wide Web, HistoryPod proves that there is always something to be remembered 'on this day'. Written and presented by Scott Allsop, creator of the award-winning www.mrallsophistory.com
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Episodes
27th May 1199: King John of England crowned at Westminster Abbey in London
May 27, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteJohn ruled for seventeen years before contracting dysentery while in Kings Lynn, an illness from which he later ...
26th May 1940: Start of the Dunkirk evacuation
May 26, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteOperation Dynamo, better known as the evacuation of Dunkirk, ...
25th May 1961: US President John F. Kennedy announces his plans for a manned moon landing before the end of the decade
May 25, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteKennedy's $24 billion of investment did work, and Apollo 11 achieved Kennedy's goal by landing on the moon on 20 July ...
24th May 1956: First Eurovision Song Contest takes place in Lugano, Switzerland
May 24, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe first Eurovision Song Contest featured only seven countries, and was broadcast across Europe using a terrestrial microwave relay network that linked the countries of Europe together like an invisible spider’s ...
23rd May 1618: Officials thrown from a window in the Second Defenestration of Prague
May 23, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteTwo Catholic imperial officials and their secretary were thrown out of the window of the Bohemian Chancellery in the Second Defenestration of ...
22nd May 1455: Wars of the Roses begin at the First Battle of St Albans between Richard, Duke of York, and King Henry VI
May 22, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe Wars of the Roses were fought between the Houses of Lancaster and York, both of whom had claims to the ...
21st May 1972: Laszlo Toth attacks and seriously damages Michelangelo’s Pietà statue
May 21, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteHungarian-born geologist Laszlo Toth attacked and seriously damaged Michelangelo’s Pietà statue with a ...
20th May 1873: Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis secure the patent for riveted blue jeans
May 20, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteDavis came up with the idea of reinforcing the stress points of garments with rivets after the wife of a woodcutter asked if he could make a pair of durable trousers for her husband, and approached Strauss with a business proposal whereby Strauss would finance the paperwork and the two men would share the ...
19th May 1919: Mustafa Kemal arrives in Samsun and begins the Turkish War of Independence
May 19, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe Turkish War of Independence began when General Mustafa Kemal Pasha, the Inspector of the Ottoman 9th Army and later known as Atatürk, arrived at the town of Samsun on the Black Sea ...
18th May 1830: The world’s first lawnmower licensed for manufacture by Edwin Budding
May 18, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteBritish inventor Edwin Budding went into partnership with foundry owner John Ferrabee to manufacture the world’s first lawn ...
17th May 1902: The Antikythera mechanism, an ancient analogue computer, was first identified by Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais
May 17, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteWhat is known as the world’s oldest computer had been in plain view for two years before anyone realised what it ...
16th May 1916: The Sykes-Picot Agreement ratified by Britain and France
May 16, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe secret Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain and France, formally known as the Asia Minor Agreement, was ...
15th May 1928: Mickey and Minnie Mouse appear in their first cartoon to be shown to a cinema audience
May 15, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteMickey Mouse's first animated appearance was in a silent short called Plane Crazy, but the cartoon failed to secure a distributor until a soundtrack was added a year ...
14th May 1955: The establishment of the Warsaw Pact
May 14, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe USSR and seven other European countries signed the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance better known as the Warsaw ...
13th May 1787: The First Fleet departs for Australia from Portsmouth in England
May 13, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteOn the 13th May 1787, the eleven ships of the “First Fleet” set sail under Captain Arthur Phillip from Portsmouth, England, to establish a penal colony in ...
12th May 1949: The Soviet Union ends its blockade of West Berlin
May 12, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteInstigated on 24 June the previous year, the Soviet blockade prevented all rail, road, and water transport between Berlin and the West of the ...
11th May 868: The world’s earliest dated printed book created in China
May 11, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe world’s earliest dated printed book, a copy of the Diamond Sutra, was created in ...
10th May 1857: The start of the Indian Mutiny (First War of Indian Independence)
May 10, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe Indian Mutiny, also known as the First War of Indian Independence, began in ...
9th May 1887: Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show opened in London at the American Exhibition in West Brompton
May 09, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThis was the first time Buffalo Bill had travelled to Britain, and also marked the first time that many Europeans had seen the fabled ‘Cowboys and ...
8th May 1945: Victory in Europe Day is celebrated as a public holiday to mark the end of the Second World War in Europe
May 08, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteVE Day was declared a public holiday in Britain and was marked with jubilant scenes across the world, much as the end of the First World War had been met with cheers and ...
7th May 1915: RMS Lusitania sunk by the German U-Boat, U-20
May 07, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe British ship RMS Lusitania sank after being attacked by the German U-boat U-20 off the coast of ...
6th May 1937: Hindenburg Disaster sees the German passenger airship LZ 129 engulfed in flames following a mid-air explosion
May 06, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe landing ropes were dropped at 7.21pm, and shortly afterwards the Hindenburg was engulfed by ...
5th May 1912: Russian Communist newspaper Pravda first published
May 05, 2023 02:05 - 1 BytePravda, the official newspaper of what became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was first ...
4th May 1932: Al Capone begins life as a convict in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary
May 04, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteCapone was found guilty on 17 October 1931 of Federal Income Tax Evasion and was sentenced to eleven years imprisonment by Judge James Herbert ...
3rd May 1915: John McCrae composes the war poem ‘In Flanders Fields’
May 03, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteLieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian doctor, wrote the war poem ‘In Flanders Fields’, which inspired the symbol of the poppy to commemorate members of the military killed in ...
2nd May 1945: The Battle of Berlin ends with the German surrender to the USSR
May 02, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe Battle of Berlin ended after German General Helmuth Weidling surrendered to Soviet General Vasily ...
1st May 1952: The first Mr Potato Head ‘funny face toy’ goes on sale
May 01, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe day before Mr Potato Head was released by Hasbro he featured in the first ever television advert for a toy that was aimed directly at ...
30th April 1963: The Bristol Bus Boycott against discriminatory recruitment begins
April 30, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteA boycott against the Bristol Omnibus Company in England was launched due to their racist employment ...
29th April 1975: Operation Frequent Wind evacuates over 1,000 American civilians and 6,000 Vietnamese from Saigon using helicopters
April 29, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe largest ever helicopter evacuation lasted for 19 hours and involved 81 helicopters shuttling the evacuees to US Navy ships moored in the South China ...
28th April 1789: The crew of HMS Bounty mutiny against Captain William Bligh
April 28, 2023 02:05 - 1 Byte23-year old Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian led a mutiny on the Royal Navy vessel HMS ...
27th April 1509: Pope Julius II excommunicates the entire population of Venice
April 27, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe interdict deprived the Venetians of their spiritual salvation, and was therefore a formidable ...
26th April 1478: The Pazzi family launch their failed plot against the Medici family
April 26, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe Pazzi family in Florence launched their unsuccessful plot to overthrow the Medici family with an assassination attempt against the brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ ...
25th April 1792: First use of the guillotine as a method of execution in France
April 25, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteNicolas Jacques Pelletier, a French highwayman who was found guilty of killing a man during one of his robberies, was the first victim of the French decapitation ...
24th April 1916: The Easter Rising begins in Dublin
April 24, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe Easter Rising began in Dublin, with the aim of securing an independent Irish ...
23rd April 1985: Coca-Cola introduce New Coke as ‘the new taste of Coca-Cola’ as a replacement for the original formula
April 23, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteMarking the first major formula change in 99 years, ‘new Coke’ is widely heralded as one of the biggest marketing failures in ...
22nd April 1884: Thomas Stevens begins the first round-the-world cycle ride
April 22, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThomas Stevens departed San Francisco on a large-wheeled Ordinary, also known as a penny-farthing, to become the first person to cycle around the ...
20th April 1902: Marie and Pierre Curie prove the existence of radium
April 20, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteMarie and Pierre Curie proved the existence of the new element radium when they chemically isolated one-tenth of a gram of pure radium ...
19th April 1770: British explorer Captain James Cook first sights Australia from HMS Endeavour
April 19, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe first sighting had been of Point Hicks, but it wasn’t until the ship had travelled some distance along the coast to what is now known as Botany Bay that Cook and his crew felt they had found a suitable ...
18th April 1506: Construction begins on Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome
April 18, 2023 02:05 - 1 BytePope Julius II laid the cornerstone of the current St. Peter's Basilica, one of Catholicism’s most sacred ...
17th April 1492: Christopher Columbus secures support for his first voyage across the Atlantic from the Catholic Monarchs, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand
April 17, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe Capitulations of Santa Fe granted a number of official titles to Columbus as well as ten per cent of any treasure he was able to secure on his ...
16th April 1917: Lenin arrives back in Russia in the sealed train after a decade in exile
April 16, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteVladimir Lenin arrived in Russia after a decade of self-imposed ...
15th April 1755: Samuel Johnson publishes ‘A Dictionary of the English Language’ in London
April 15, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteJohnson’s finished dictionary contained 42,773 words, each of which featured a number of notes on their specific ...
14th April 1561: The Nuremberg celestial phenomenon sees a ‘dreadful apparition’ in the sky over the German city
April 14, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteModern UFO enthusiasts have used the Nuremberg celestial phenomenon as evidence of extra-terrestrial life, although scientists have also put forward their own explanations of why hundreds of people saw what was described as an aerial battle raging in front of the ...
13th April 1919: British troops commit the Amritsar Massacre
April 13, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteTroops from the British Indian Army committed the Amritsar Massacre when they opened fire on nonviolent protesters and pilgrims at Jallianwala ...
12th April 1945: Harry S. Truman becomes the 33rd President of the United States when his predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, dies while having his portrait painted
April 12, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteTruman faced an enormous challenge simply by being the person to follow Roosevelt as President, let alone the ongoing struggles of the Second World ...
11th April 1950: Stone of Scone rediscovered four months after its disappearance
April 11, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe Stone of Scone was found on the site of the High Altar at Arbroath Abbey, nearly four months after it disappeared from Westminster ...
10th April 1858: Big Ben, the bell inside the clock tower at the Palace of Westminster, was cast
April 10, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe bell has chimed the hours almost non-stop since it first rang in July 1859, over a year after the bell itself was cast at the Whitechapel Bell ...
9th April 1767: John Hancock forcibly removes British customs officials from his ship
April 09, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteJohn Hancock, one of Boston’s wealthiest merchants and a leading figure in Boston politics, forcibly removed customs officials from his ship ...
8th April 1904: The Entente Cordiale between Britain and France signed
April 08, 2023 02:05 - 1 ByteThe agreement marked the end of years of intermittent conflict between Britain and France and set the stage for the series of agreements known as the Triple Entente that bound Britain, France and Russia together at the start of the First World ...