Episodes

Larry Donovan made headlines by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge on 28th August, 1886: a daring feat that earned him the name of the ‘Champion Jumper of the World’ and a reputation for daredevil jumps that ultimately led to his early death. Donovan, who worked for the Police Gazette, an early men’s magazine filled with […]

The awesome, brutal power of the Krakatoa eruption, which had the explosive force of a 200-megatonne bomb, killed more than 36,000 people and cooled the entire Earth by an average of 0.6°C. Curiously, Krakatoa is not the most powerful volcanic eruption in history, but it is perhaps the most famous because it became one of

Rerun: Howard Hawks’ film noir ‘The Big Sleep’ finally hit cinemas on 23rd August, 1946, after extra crowd-pleasing repartee had been inserted, featuring real life couple Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. But more flirtation meant less exposition – making the plot of the detective story notoriously difficult to follow, even to the extent that the

The creation of Haiti was the culmination of a slave revolt that began on a stormy night in the dense woods of Bois Caïman in Saint-Domingue, on 21st September, 1791, when a Voodoo ceremony led by the Jamaican-born priest Dutty Boukman called upon the enslaved Africans to reject their masters and embrace freedom in a

Winston Churchill had only been Prime Minister for three months when, on 20th August, 1940, he delivered ‘The Few’ – one of his most iconic speeches – in the House of Commons.  Arion, Rebecca and Olly consider how and why Churchill’s paean to the courage of RAF pilots during the Battle of Britain has been

A whopping 40,000 spectators gathered at Burkhart Hill in Dayton, Ohio, to witness the first-ever All American Soapbox Derby on August 19th, 1934. Hundreds of kids, aged 10 to 15, raced in homemade cars built from recycled materials and old pram and bike wheels, all powered solely by gravity.  The event originated in 1933 when

Rerun: Conjoined teenagers Chang and Eng Bunker began their world tour in Boston, Massachusetts on 16th August, 1829. ‘Discovered’ by Scotsman Robert Hunter in Siam (now Thailand), the boys inspired the term ‘Siamese Twins’, despite being ethnically Chinese. Chang was a heavy drinker, and Eng was a teetotaller – yet they shared a liver. They

The Stanford Prison Experiment, created by Philip Zimbardo, began on 14th August, 1971. 24 male college students volunteered to be assigned roles as either ‘guard’ or ‘prisoner’ in a mock jail: the ‘prisoners’ were ‘arrested’ by real cops outside their family homes and marched down to a Police Station before being transferred to their imitation

The ‘mock’ battle of Manila took place on 13th August, 1898, when the Spanish Army attempted to save face by staging a low-impact fight with the Americans, handing over the territory of the Philippines without seeming weak. The pseudo engagement aimed for a bloodless resolution, but unintentional shots fired from both sides disrupted the facade.

Isaac Singer’s iteration of a mechanised sewing machine received US Patent Number 8294 on 12th August, 1851.  By refining an existing design by Elias Howe, and improving it with a straight-line shuttle and straight needle, Singer’s prototype produced 900 stitches a minute, compared to 40 stitches by hand, drastically reducing the time it took to