Episodes

The frontman of Pulp, Jarvis Cocker, infamously crashed the stage of the Brit Awards while Michael Jackson was performing Earth Song at the 1996 Brit Awards on this day in London.  The incident has gone down in history as one of the most controversial musical moments of the 1990s, not least because immediately after he […]

Multi-talented monk Andrew of Longjumeau embarked on a daring journey to the heart of the Mongol Empire on 16th February, 1249. As Ambassador of Louis IX, he led a delegation destined for the court of the Mongol Khan Güyük – who had, awkwardly, died before he got there. Although not the first European envoy to

RERUN: TV chef Delia Smith built a stellar career on the success spawned from her first book, ‘How To Cheat At Cooking’ in 1971. So, when she published a reboot on 15th February, 2008, it seemed a shoo-in to sell bucketloads (which it did) – but not, perhaps, attract controversy (which it REALLY did). By

Luella Parsons’s reign as Tinseltown’s top tittle-tattler was severely challenged on 14th February, 1938, following the print debut of rival column, ‘Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood’.  With her fiery style and incendiary content, Hopper quickly garnered a massive audience of her own. Together, the two writers reached over 75 million readers and radio listeners in Hollywood’s golden

The Winter Olympics kicked off in Calgary on 13th February, 1988 – but the stand-out stars of the event did not qualify for a medal. Rather, the four-man Jamaican Bobsled team – who would later become (unreliably) immortalised in the Disney comedy ‘Cool Runnings’ – became a testament to the intersection of determination, investment, and

Lady Jane Grey – Queen of England for just nine days – was executed at the Tower of London on 12th February, 1554. Edward VI, who had died aged 15, named the teenager as his successor in his will, even though Henry VIII’s daughters Mary and Elizabeth had a more direct connection to the throne.

Before ‘The X Factor’ and ‘The Voice’, there was ‘Pop Idol’, the ITV behemoth that spawned Simon Fuller’s global mega-hit ‘American Idol’.  Season One climaxed on 9th February, 2002, when Gareth Gates – a 17-year-old former head chorister – and Will Young – a politely-spoken 23-year-old alumnus of Wellington College – slugged it out for

The first film to feature Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Tramp’ character was filmed on 7th February, 1914: the Keystone comedy short, ‘Kid Auto Races at Venice’.  Remarkably, Chaplin had created the character only three days earlier, on instruction by studio boss Max Sennett to inject more gags into another film, ‘Mabel’s Strange Predicament’. In the costume cupboard,

Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia was executed by the Bolsheviks in 1917 – yet, on 6th February, 1928, a mentally troubled Polish factory worker claiming to be her was welcomed to New York by Romanov associates. Anna Anderson’s claim to be the Tsar’s daughter climaxed in a 32-year legal saga, the longest in German history.

On this day in 1909 Leo Baekeland announced his invention of Bakelite to the American Chemical Society. Having already earned a fortune selling his photographic patent to Kodak, the Belgian-born chemist had opened his own lab in Yonkers, experimenting with formaldehyde and phenol. The resulting material, which he called Bakelite, could be used in everything