Episodes

In this week’s Sunday’s episode, exclusively for our 🌴CLUB RETROSPECTORS🌴supporters on Apple Podcasts and Patreon, Arion, Rebecca and Olly discover ‘miracle babies’ the Dionne Quintuplets – Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie, and Marie, the first known quintuplets to survive infancy – born on 28th May, 1934 in rural Canada. Fearing private exploitation, the Ontario government removed […]

Rerun: Spectacle, camp and glamour were NOT on the agenda in Lugano, Switzerland on 24th May, 1956: the inaugural Eurovision Song Contest was broadcast mostly on the radio, and featured a whistling duo as its interval act. Who had to perform twice. Voting controversy, however, was enshrined in the institution right from the outset –

When Jerry Lee Lewis landed at Heathrow Airport for his first UK tour on 22nd May, 1958, he was met with a flurry of journalists eager for a scoop. Yet just one question brought everything to a halt: “Who are you?”.  A wide-eyed girl in Lewis’s entourage answered: Myra Gale Brown, his wife. But she

The funeral for Jamaican reggae star Bob Marley was half religious ceremony, half rock concert on 21st May, 1981. An estimated 100,000 people are believed to have seen Marley’s body lying in state, and the announcement of Jamaica’s national budget was postponed by several days to accommodate his funeral. The casket contained his red Gibson

‘Protect and Survive’, the UK Government’s pamphlet offering Britons advice on how to navigate the aftermath of a nuclear explosion, was published on 20th May, 1980, following a campaign in The Times. Intended for distribution in times of imminent crisis – and only alongside the broadcast of a series of related public information films –

Rerun: Gun totin’, horse ridin’ spectacular ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West’ opened in Omaha, Nebraska on 17th May, 1883 – the start of a multi-decade run. With a cast of hundreds, including Calamity Jane, Sitting Bull, and Annie ‘Get Your Gun’ Oakley, it toured the world – and forever shaped the way cowboys and Indians were

George III narrowly dodged a bullet for the SECOND time in one day on 15th May, 1800, as he attended a performance at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.   The assassination attempt came from James Hadfield, a clinically insane former soldier, who rose from the pit and fired a pistol at the King, causing uproar in

Rerun: The two minute silence can be traced back to 14th May, 1918, when it was first observed in Cape Town, South Africa.  Repeated daily for a year, and initiated by the firing of the noon day gun on Signal Hill, the ‘Two Minute Silent Pause of Remembrance’, as it was known, was instituted by

Disdain for bad table manners reportedly led 17th Century Machiavelli Cardinal Richelieu to insist that knives should be flattened at his table on 13th May, 1637 – revolutionising dining etiquette. While some Mediaeval habits such as spitting and urinating at the table had largely disappeared by this era, finger-licking and the use of knives as

As Annette Sorensen drank margaritas in a New York BBQ restaurant on May 10th, 1997, she left her 14 month-old daughter outside, in a stroller.  She spent two days in jail, was accused of child neglect, and was separated from her baby for four days. But Sorensen, a Danish visitor to the States, claimed she