Episodes

The Cornell Daily Sun – the oldest continuously independent college daily newspaper in the United States – published its first issue on 16th September, 1880. It featured some campus sports reports, some horrible amateur poetry, and even some jokes. It wasn’t until seven years later that a British University caught up with its own equivalent: […]

The start of World War I featured officers in white gloves, leading troops in neat lines, and cavalry charges complete with sabres and lances. But this changed on 15th September, 1914 – when soldiers began digging into the earth, laying the groundwork for the trench warfare that would come to define the conflict. By that

The guillotine claimed its last victim on 10th September, 1977, when murderer Hamida Djandoubi was executed in Marseille, his grim end marking the closing chapter of nearly two centuries of clinical beheading, stretching back to the French Revolution.  Overseen by France’s last official executioner Marcel Chevalier, the event was private and hushed – a far

‘The Hank McCune Show’ – an otherwise unremarkable footnote in American TV history – became the first single-camera sitcom to deploy a pre-recorded laugh track (aka ‘canned laughter’) on 9th September, 1950. The giggles and applause came courtesy of Charlie Douglass, who made a career of capturing audience reaction in his ‘laff box’, and then

Now celebrated as the most famous statue in the world, Michelangelo’s David was first unveiled in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria on 8th September, 1504. Originally intended for the roofline of Florence’s cathedral, David’s immense size and weight—over five meters tall and weighing more than five and a half tons—was relocated to the square. But its

Fred van der Weij, a Dutch electronics engineer with a craving for healthier chips, spent years tinkering in his garage to create the “frit air” – launched by Philips as the “Air Fryer” at Berlin’s IFA technology trade show on 3rd September, 2010. The inventor’s prototypes were made from wood and chicken wire – and

Endurance swimmer Diana Nyad was 64 years old when she became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the use of a shark cage for protection on 2nd September, 2013. Nyad completed the 110-mile swim from Havana to Key West in approximately 53 hours. It was her fifth attempt to swim through

How come baseball, that most American of games, is even more popular in Japan than in its home country?  It’s a story with roots into the nineteenth century, as Arion, Olly and Rebecca discover while  they investigate the events of September 1st, 1964, when the San Francisco Giants introduced their newest player, Masanori Murakami, during

Over 1,300 athletes from 12 countries gathered at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco for the first-ever Gay Games, on 28th August, 1982.  Intended as the “Gay Olympics,” the event had to change its name at the last minute after the US Olympic Committee sued. But the opening ceremony was electric, with none other than Tina

The shortest war in history began at 09:02 on 27th August, 1896 – and was over 38 minutes later – when The British Empire, at the peak of its power, flexed its military might over the African island of Zanzibar. The drama began when the pro-British Sultan Hamad suddenly died, and his cousin Khalid bin