Episodes

When Starbucks opened in Pike Place, Seattle, on March 30th, 1971, it was a simple shop selling whole coffee beans, tea, and spices – with no creamy macchiatos or pumpkin spice lattes in sight. Founders Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegel, and Gordon Bowker, mentored by Dutch coffee trader Alfred Peet, never intended the store to become […]

The mass suicide of 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult in San Diego County was discovered on 26th March, 1997. The tragedy came to light after a former member alerted authorities, having received a farewell videotape recorded by the group.  Leader Marshall Applewhite had preached that a spacecraft travelling in the wake of the

Ricky Martin’s ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’ was released on 23rd March, 1999 – launching the singer to worldwide superstardom, and kickstarting a Latino pop boom that propelled J-Lo, Shakira, Christina Aguilera, Enrique Iglesias and Santana into the charts. But he wasn’t an overnight success. He had already conquered the Latin music world, starred on General

Blaise Pascal created the first organised public transport system: the carrosses à cinq sols (“five-sou carriages”), which had its first full day of service in Paris on 19th March, 1662. Like a modern bus, the horse-drawn carriages followed fixed routes and scheduled departures, running whether or not they were full; a scheme authorised by royal

Over 200 people were burned at the stake on 16th March, 1244, throwing themselves on to the pyre in their refusal to accept the Catholic church. These ‘Cathars’ reportedly followed a radical dualist belief system, seeing the material world as the creation of an evil force, with salvation lying in renouncing earthly pleasures. After years

What is Australia’s capital city? Not Sydney. Nor Melbourne. It’s Canberra: so named at an official ceremony on 12th March, 1913 – when the site was little more than grazing land for sheep. But for this newly-federated nation, Canberra’s remote, inland location was a deliberate compromise to offset the rivalry between the country’s two largest

Svetlana Aleluyeva walked into the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi on 9th March, 1967, and asked for political asylum. As the only daughter of Joseph Stalin, she was an unknown figure outside the USSR; panicking American diplomats: how could they grant her asylum, without warming up the Cold War? The U.S. tried to keep her

The hip-swivelling Hula Hoop craze swept through America within months of its 1958 debut – yet Wham-O didn’t receive a patent for it until 5th March, 1963.  The toy had first come to the attention of Arthur K. ‘Spud’ Melin, the company’s co-founder, when Australian swimsuit model Joan Anderson demonstrated it in California. Appending the

King Kong roared onto the silver screen on March 2nd, 1933, in an extraordinary simultaneous screening at Radio City and the Roxy, New York – attracting 10,000 viewers in one hit. The buzz around the film was no accident — RKO Pictures had blitzed the public with an aggressive marketing campaign, including publishing a novelization

The 89th Academy Awards reached its grand finale on 26th February 2017, with a balls-up that instantly entered Hollywood lore. Presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway stepped onstage to announce Best Picture and declared La La Land the winner. Cast and crew flooded the stage, speeches began, and the orchestra swelled – but the true