HistoryPod
A daily podcast that explores historical events that happened on each day of the year, covering topics from the Roman Empire to the World Wide Web. Written and presented by Scott Allsop, creator of the award-winning educational website mrallsophistory.com.
Episodes
23rd August 1944: King Michael of Romania leads a coup d’etat against Ion Antonescu
King Michael I of Romania led a coup d'état that removed the Nazi-aligned government of Ion ...
22nd August 1791: Start of the Haitian Revolution in the French colony of Saint-Domingue
Slaves in the French colony of Saint-Domingue on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola began the Haitian ...
21st August 1945: The Demon Core fatally irradiates physicist Harry Daghlian during an experiment at Los Alamos Laboratory
Daghlian was working alone when he accidentally dropped a block of tungsten onto the plutonium core, which increased the reflection of neutrons and pushed the system into a supercritical ...
20th August 1940: Leon Trotsky attacked with an ice axe in Mexico
Leon Trotsky was fatally wounded with an ice axe by Spanish communist Ramón ...
19th August 1989: The Pan-European Picnic opens the Cold War border between Hungary and Austria
The Cold War border between Austria and Hungary was opened for a short period of time for the Pan-European ...
18th August 1940: “The Hardest Day” of the Battle of Britain during the Second World War
“The Hardest Day” saw the Luftwaffe lose more than 60 aircraft, while the RAF lost around 30 fighters together with experienced pilots whose replacement was increasingly ...
17th August 1836: Parliament passes the 1836 Marriage Act, allowing non-Anglican ceremonies
Parliament passed the Marriage Act that legalised civil marriages and introduced their formal ...
16th August 1858: Queen Victoria sends the first transatlantic telegram
Queen Victoria sent the first telegram using the newly-installed transatlantic telegraph cable to US President James ...
15th August 1969: Woodstock Music and Art Fair opens on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm near Bethel in New York
Officially promoted as “An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music,” Woodstock remains one of the defining moments in the history of modern popular ...
14th August 1941: Roosevelt and Churchill issue the Atlantic Charter
The Atlantic Charter was issued by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston ...
13th August 1876: The premiere of Wagner’s complete Ring cycle takes place in Germany
The first complete performance of Wagner’s Ring cycle took place in the Bavarian town of ...
12th August 1977: Space Shuttle Enterprise completes the first free flight of the Space Shuttle programme
After separation from the carrier aircraft the pilots completed a controlled descent and precise landing at Edwards Air Force Base, confirming earlier aerodynamic predictions and providing engineers with valuable information for the construction and operation of the orbital shuttle ...
11th August 1919: The Weimar Republic officially established when Friedrich Ebert signs the new constitution into law
It took the best of part of seven months for the delegates of the new German National Assembly to agree on the terms of the new Weimar constitution, which Ebert signed into law whilst on holiday in ...
10th August 1793: The Louvre museum in Paris opens to the public for the first time
The Louvre museum in Paris opened to the public in the former palace of the French royal ...
9th August 1944: Smokey Bear, the forest fire prevention mascot, first appears on a poster in the United States
Produced in cooperation with the Ad Council, the first Smokey Bear poster, released on 9 August 1944, showed the bear pouring a bucket of water onto a campfire beneath the message, “Smokey says – Care will prevent 9 out of 10 forest fires.” The illustration was created by artist Albert Staehle, whose friendly but authoritative depiction proved immediately ...
8th August 1969: The Beatles pose for an album cover on the Abbey Road zebra crossing
Traffic was stopped on the B507 road in London so The Beatles could pose for their iconic Abbey Road album ...
7th August 1909: Alice Ramsey makes the first female transcontinental car journey
Alice Huyler Ramsey became the first woman to drive an automobile across a continent when she completed a 59-day road trip from New York to San ...
6th August 1965: Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law during the height of the Civil Rights movement
The Voting Rights Act outlawed literacy tests and authorised federal officials to oversee voter registration in jurisdictions with a history of discrimination, resulting in a substantial increase in voter registration and political participation among African Americans in the years that ...
5th August 1305: William Wallace captured by English troops at Robroyston
Scottish independence leader Sir William Wallace was captured by English forces at Robroyston near ...
4th August 221: The death of Lady Zhen of the Three Kingdoms
On 4 August 221 Lady Zhen, the wife of Cao Pi of Wei of the Three Kingdoms, ...
3rd August 1914: Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, remarked that “The lamps are going out all over Europe…”
As Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey had attempted to prevent the crisis but these efforts proved unsuccessful and, during the evening of 3 August, he reportedly remarked, “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our ...
2nd August 216 BCE: Hannibal defeats the Roman army at the Battle of Cannae
Hannibal’s army inflicted a devastating defeat on the numerically superior Roman army at the Battle of ...
1st August 1714: George, Elector of Hanover, becomes King George I of Great Britain
George, Elector of Hanover, became King George I of Great ...
31st July 1971: David Scott and James Irwin drive the first Lunar Roving Vehicle on the Moon during the Apollo 15 mission
The astronauts visited geological features near the Apollo 15 landing site in the Hadley-Apennine region, collected samples, and deployed scientific experiments, while television images transmitted from the rover allowed audiences on Earth to observe the ...
30th July 1792: La Marseillaise, the future French national anthem, first sung in Paris by a group of volunteer soldiers from the city of Marseille
La Marseillaise was composed by a French army officer and was originally called the ‘War Song for the Army of the Rhine’ with the aim of rallying soldiers fighting in Strasbourg during the French Revolutionary ...
29th July 1567: James VI crowned king of Scotland at just 13 months old
James was the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots, who was forced to abdicate in favour of her young son a month after she was ...
28th July 1755: Expulsion of the Acadians agreed by British Lieutenant Governor Charles Lawrence and the Nova Scotia Council
British officials regarded the Acadian population as a security risk and, on 28 July, Lieutenant-Governor Charles Lawrence and his council resolved that the Acadians should be removed and dispersed among Britain’s North American ...
27th July 1940: Bugs Bunny makes his cartoon debut in A Wild Hare
Bugs Bunny made his first appearance in the Merrie Melodies cartoon A Wild ...
26th July 1745: First ever women’s cricket match played near Guildford
The first ever women’s cricket match was played on Gosden Common near Guildford in ...
25th July 1792: Brunswick Manifesto during the French Revolution threatened retaliation if the royal family was harmed
The Brunswick Manifesto declared that, rather than conquering France, the invading armies sought to restore lawful authority in the country and warned that any attack on the royal family would bring “exemplary and ever memorable vengeance”, threatening the city of Paris with destruction if its inhabitants resisted the advancing armies or continued to detain the ...
24th July 1927: Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing unveiled in the Belgian city of Ypres
The Menin Gate is one of four memorials to missing British and Commonwealth soldiers from the First World War in the area around the Ypres Salient, and features more than 54,000 ...
23rd July 1943: Archibald Brown blown up by an anti-tank grenade placed under his seat
Archibald Brown was murdered by his son, who placed an anti-tank grenade under the seat of his bath ...
22nd July 1894: World’s first organised automobile race takes place between Paris and Rouen
The Comte Jules-Albert de Dion’s steam tractor crossed the finish line first but the judges concluded that his vehicle required too much support to satisfy the competition’s objectives, so the principal prize was shared between the manufacturers Panhard et Levassor and Peugeot, whose petrol cars were considered the most practical ...
21st July 1925: ‘Monkey Trial’ finds John T. Scopes guilty of teaching evolution
John Thomas Scopes, a substitute science teacher in Tennessee, was found guilty of teaching evolution in ...
20th July 1969: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin successfully land on the surface of the moon during the Apollo 11 mission
The words ‘Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed’ confirmed the safe touchdown at around 8:17pm ...
19th July 1843: The ship SS Great Britain designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel launched in Bristol
Combining an iron hull with screw-propeller propulsion, SS Great Britain was the largest ship afloat at the time of its launch and introduced technologies that would influence ocean-going ships for the remainder of the nineteenth ...
18th July 1976: Nadia Comăneci scores the first ever Olympic gymnastic ‘perfect 10’
Romanian gymnast Nadia Comăneci scored the first ever perfect 10 in Olympic history on the uneven bars at the Summer Games in ...
17th July 1453: The Battle of Castillon, widely accepted as last conflict of the Hundred Years’ War
The Battle of Castillon, considered to be the last battle of the Hundred Years’ War, was fought between France and ...
16th July 1661: Europe’s first banknotes issued by the Swedish bank Stockholms Banco
The new banknotes were welcomed because they were lighter, easier to carry, and more convenient for trade. The bank also found that paper currency encouraged greater commercial ...
15th July 1834: Abolition of the Spanish Inquisition, formally known as the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition
By the time it was abolished, up to 150,000 people had been tried by the Spanish Inquisition, of whom somewhere between two and five thousand were ...
14th July 1789: Storming of the Bastille marks the start of the French Revolution
The Bastille had long been a symbol of tyranny as a place for the imprisonment of people without trial, but when it was stormed it only contained seven ...
13th July 1930: Inaugural FIFA World Cup begins in Uruguay during the centenary of the country’s first constitution
FIFA president Jules Rimet organised football’s own independent international championship, with Uruguay as the host nation due to Uruguay’s victories in the Olympic football tournaments of 1924 and 1928, as well as the country’s willingness to finance the event during the centenary celebrations of its first ...
12th July 1561: The consecration of Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow
Moscow’s Trinity Church, later renamed Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat and better known as Saint Basil's Cathedral, was ...
11th July 1922: The Hollywood Bowl opens in Los Angeles
The Hollywood Bowl opened in Bolton Canyon near Los ...
10th July 1991: Boris Yeltsin is inaugurated as the first elected President of Russia
Yeltsin swore to uphold the constitution and protect the rights of Russian citizens, emphasising political reform and democratic ...
9th July 1971: Henry Kissinger makes a secret diplomatic trip to China
Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon’s National Security Advisor, made a secret trip to China to meet with Premier Zhou ...
8th July 1932: Dow Jones falls to its lowest point during the Great Depression
From its high of 381.17 on September 3, 1929, the Dow plummeted by almost 90 per cent to 41.22 on July 8, ...
7th July 1937: Marco Polo Bridge Incident acts as a trigger for the Second Sino-Japanese War
What began as a local military incident near the Marco Polo Bridge on the outskirts of Beijing developed into the Second Sino-Japanese War, which later became part of the wider Second World War in ...
6th July 1947: The Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle goes into production in the USSR
The Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle went into production in the Soviet ...
5th July 1948: Launch of the National Health Service in England and Wales
The Labour government of Clement Atlee won the first post-war election with a pledge to implement the recommendations of the 1942 Beveridge Report and improve the social welfare system in ...
4th July 1776: United States Declaration of Independence adopted unanimously by the Second Continental Congress
The Declaration of Independence announced that the thirteen American colonies regarded themselves as “free and independent States”, marking the birth of the United States as a political entity with a set of principles upon which the new nation claimed ...
3rd July 1938: World speed record for steam locomotives set by Number 4468 Mallard at just under 126mph
Mallard set the record of 125.88mph on a stretch of slightly downhill railway track at Stoke Band, south of the town of ...
2nd July 1964: Civil Rights Act signed into law by US President Lyndon B. Johnson
The Act outlawed discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin and is consequently viewed as a landmark piece of civil rights ...
1st July 1569: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth created with the signing of the Union of Lublin
Agreed at the city of Lublin after months of negotiation, the union joined the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into a single political entity with a single elected monarch and a joint parliament responsible for matters affecting the Commonwealth as a ...
30th June 1934: Hitler purges the Nazi party in the Night of the Long Knives
Although the popular name suggests the purge lasted for one night, the executions went on throughout the ...
29th June 2008: Apple release the iPhone
The 29th June 2008 shaped the technological landscape we live in today, when Apple released the very first ...
28th June 1838: Queen Victoria crowned at Westminster Abbey following the death of her uncle, William IV
For many observers, Victoria’s appearance and behaviour during the coronation ceremony contributed positively to perceptions of the monarchy as her youth and visibility contrasted with the image of earlier Hanoverian ...
27th June 1905: Mutiny on board the Russian battleship Potemkin
Seven of the ship’s eighteen officers, including Giliarovsky and the Captain, were killed in the mutiny before the Tsar's forces launched a crackdown at the Odessa ...
26th June 1974: World’s first barcode scanned on a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum
Sharon Buchanan, a cashier at the Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, scanned the world’s first Universal Product Code (better known as a barcode) on a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit ...
25th June 1967: Our World, live global television production, broadcast using satellite technology
Organised by the BBC in cooperation with broadcasters from around the world, the Our World programme connected participants in Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia using satellite ...
24th June 1374: Dancing Plague breaks out in the German city of Aachen and continues for many weeks
Known variously as St John's Dance, St Vitus' Dance, or the ‘dancing plague’, the occurrence in Aachen was neither the first nor the last outbreak but is one of the best ...
23rd June 1314: The Battle of Bannockburn begins, resulting in a victory for Robert the Bruce against Edward II
Bannockburn was unusual for a medieval battle in that it lasted for two days, with the first day being notable for Bruce single-handedly killing the young English knight Sir Henry de Bohun with an axe blow to the head after he tried to charge him with a ...
22nd June 1941: Operation Barbarossa begins as German forces and their allies invade the Soviet Union during the Second World War
By the end of 1940 Hitler had authorised the invasion of the USSR, with the intention of securing agricultural land and raw materials, alongside the eradication of ...
21st June 1919: German High Seas naval fleet scuttled in Scapa Flow, resulting in 52 ships being sunk
Concerned that the entire fleet might be shared out between the victors as the spoils of war Admiral von Reuter, the German officer in charge of the interned fleet, decided to purposely sink the ...
20th June 1789: Tennis Court Oath sworn by the French National Assembly in which they vowed not to separate until a written constitution had been established
The Deputies of the French Third Estate swore not to separate until a written constitution had been established for the ...
19th June 1846: First officially recorded baseball game takes place in Hoboken, New Jersey
On 19 June 1846, the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club travelled across the Hudson River to play against the New York Nine at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New ...
18th June 1815: Battle of Waterloo heralds the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte
Combined British and Prussian military forces defeated the French, but Wellington himself said that the battle was ‘the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your ...
17th June 1885: Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbour on board the French steamship Isère
The statue arrived disassembled, and remained in its 210 separate crates for 10 months while construction of the enormous pedestal it was to stand on was ...
16th June 1824: Reformers meet in London to establish what becomes the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
The meeting in Old Slaughter’s Coffee House formalised the organisation’s structure and objectives. Early activities included bringing prosecutions against individuals accused of mistreating animals, distributing pamphlets, and encouraging more humane standards in markets, transport, and ...
15th June 1215: Magna Carta approved by King John at Runnymede near Windsor in England
Magna Carta, which is Latin for ‘the Great Charter’, confirmed the principle that everyone including the king was subject to the law of the land and gave all free men the right to justice and a fair ...
14th June 1645: The Battle of Naseby fought in the English Civil War
The Battle of Naseby, a decisive engagement of the English Civil War, was fought between the Royalist army of King Charles I and the Parliamentarian New Model ...
13th June 1917: The deadliest air raid on London of the First World War conducted by German Gotha bombers
162 people were killed and over 400 were injured, including at a school in Upper North Street School in Poplar where a bomb struck during school ...
12th June 1987: Ronald Reagan calls on Mikhail Gorbachev to ‘Tear down this wall!’
US President Ronald Reagan made a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in which he called on the USSR’s leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, to ‘Tear down this ...
11th June 1837: Broad Street Riot takes place in Boston, Massachusetts, between Irish immigrants and existing American citizens
The violence grew to involve around 1,000 people on both sides who also broke into houses and destroyed ...
10th June 1605: False Dmitry I enters Moscow and is recognised as tsar following the death of Boris Godunov
False Dmitry asserted that he was Dmitry Ivanovich, the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible. With support from Polish nobles, mercenaries, and anti-Godunov factions, he entered Russian territory from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in ...
9th June 1815: ‘Final Act’ of the Congress of Vienna signed, nine days before Napoleon’s final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo
The Final Act of the Congress set in place a map of Europe that remained largely unchanged for the next forty years, and which laid the foundations for the First World ...
8th June 793: Viking raiders attack Lindisfarne in Northumbria
Norse raiders attacked the holy island of Lindisfarne off the Northumbrian coast in an event that is generally accepted as the start of the ‘Viking’ period of British ...
7th June 1788: Day of the Tiles breaks out in the French city of Grenoble, serving as an early precursor to the French Revolution
Royal troops entered Grenoble to dissolve the parlement and remove magistrates from the city. Crowds of townspeople gathered in response, and protesters climbed onto rooftops from where they threw roof tiles at the troops ...
6th June 1944: D-Day landings launched by the Allied forces of the Second World War in Normandy
The amphibious landings in Normandy are still the largest seaborne invasion ever to be staged, and marked the start of the Allied invasion of Nazi-held Western ...
5th June 1967: Start of the Six Day War as Israel launches air strikes against the Egyptian air force
By the time a final ceasefire was signed on 10 June, Israel’s territorial gains had put around a million Arabs under their control, signalling the start of a new phase in Arab-Israeli ...
