Episodes

The ‘Cool Britannia’ party – held at 10 Downing Street on 30th July, 1997 – quickly became one of the most iconic events of the New Labour era. Celebrities including Helen Mirren, Eddie Izzard and Lenny Henry were invited to Britain’s seat of power to sup champagne with Tony Blair, the youngest Prime Minister since […]

When J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring reached British bookshops on 29th July 1954, there was little sign it would become one of the most influential novels of the century.  Britain was only just emerging from post-war austerity, food rationing had ended only weeks before, and Tolkien’s hefty, 21-shilling fantasy – complete with a

Warner Brothers’ biggest animated star, Bugs Bunny, made his cartoon debut on July 27th, 1940, in A Wild Hare – though, at the time, he didn’t officially have a name… Though previous versions of the ‘wabbit had appeared in earlier Looney Tunes shorts, this incarnation – directed by Tex Avery – solidified his iconic look,

Concerned that it was too London-centric, the BBC commissioned a series of pop-up outside broadcasts for its youth music station Radio 1, kicking off modestly in Newquay on 23rd July, 1973. The events exploded in popularity, and spawned an annual tour of bucket-and-spade Britain, becoming the iconic ‘Radio 1 Roadshow’. Despite the concerts pulling in

Pablo Escobar dramatically escaped from La Catedral (aka ‘Hotel Escobar’, his luxurious prison compound) on 22nd July, 1992.  The drugs lord had surrendered the previous year under an extraordinary deal that allowed him to avoid extradition to the United States by serving his sentence in a bling hilltop retreat, complete with recreational facilities, fine food

Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg tried to kill Hitler with a suitcase bomb on 20th July, 1944. He failed. The plan — bold, desperate, and nearly successful — was part of Operation Valkyrie, a broader scheme to take control of Germany after Hitler’s death and steer the country away from what many military officers feared was

Kissing was a big deal in the Middle Ages: for signing contracts, for greeting colleagues, and for showing deference to the King – a tradition that ended on 16th July, 1439, when Henry VI issued a decree imploring his citizens to stop kissing his ring. Some 400 years before the modern concepts of hygiene and

The inventor of margarine, French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès, patented his butter substitute on 15th July, 1869. Inspired by a competition launched by Emperor Napoleon III to find a cheaper, longer-lasting alternative to butter for the French Navy, Mège-Mouriès called his creation ‘oléomargarine’. It combined purified beef fat with milk and water to create a spread

Designed as a temporary billboard for a luxury housing development, the iconic ‘Hollywood’ sign (originally spelling out ‘Hollywoodland’) was dedicated on July 13th, 1923. It was intended to last 18 months. Over a century later, it remains. Erected at cost of $21,000—about $360,000 today—and lit by 4,000 bulbs that flashed dramatically in segments (“Holly,” then

One of the BBC’s biggest-ever flops, soap opera ‘Eldorado’, broadcast its final episode on 9th July, 1993 – just one year after it had begun, at a reported cost of £10 million. Focussing on the glamorous lives of British expats – fusing the elements of ‘EastEnders’ and ‘Neighbours’ – it had seemed destined to be