Episodes

Quilon, in present-day Kerala, became India’s first diocese on 9th August, 1329. In response to Marco Polo’s accounts about an extant Christian community there, Pope John XXII had dispatched missionary Jordan Catalani to oversee the region.  According to local legend, St. Thomas the apostle reached India around A.D. 50, where he established several churches. The […]

The dollar emerged as the official currency of the United States at a meeting of the Continental Congress on 8th August, 1786. During the American Revolution, various international coins had remained in circulation – alongside commodities like tobacco and cod. The transition to paper money faced challenges due to counterfeiting concerns, which persisted until the

The Kon-Tiki expedition, led by Norwegian explorer and ethnologist Thor Heyerdahl, reached Raroia in the Tuamotu Archipelag near Tahiti, on 7th August, 1947. The 45-foot-long balsa wood raft, with a five-man crew, had completed a 4,300-mile, 101-day journey from Peru.  Heyerdahl wanted to prove his (now discredited) theory that prehistoric South Americans could have colonized

The public stocks in St Clement’s Dane’s parish (now Portugal Street in London’s Strand) were finally dismantled on 4th August, 2023. They had originally been mandated in 1351, to subjugate labourers demanding higher wages.  Not to be confused for pillories (which restrain both head and hands), stocks (which restrain only the feet) were used for

Rerun. Eyebrows were raised when Dave Manning – a previously unknown film critic – was suddenly receiving star billing on Hollywood movie posters. He turned out to be fictional. This climaxed with a lawsuit, settled by Sony on 3rd August, 2005. Manning had been created by Columbia Pictures executive Matthew Kramer, who’d co-opted the name

It’s rare to find a politician behaving as heroically as John F. Kennedy did on 2nd August, 1943. After his torpedo boat was exploded by a Japanese destroyer in the South Pacific, he swam more than three miles to the nearest island, towing along with him all the way an injured crew member – using

Andre and Edouard Michelin published their first Guide on 1st August, 1900. Now recognised as  the gold standard in luxury restaurant reviews, the original guide was primarily created to encourage demand for automobiles – and, therefore, Michelin tyres. At the time, there were fewer than 3,000 cars on French roads. Nearly 35,000 copies of this

The Royal Navy were issued with their final daily ration of rum – ending a tradition of more than 300 years – on July 31, 1970. The day became known as ‘Black Tot Day’. The demise of the long-standing tradition was mainly due to safety concerns, following fears surrounding the more complex technology now in

Independent horror film ‘White Zombie’, starring Bela Lugosi, premiered in New York City’s Rivoli Theatre on July 28th, 1932. It marked the first time that zombies had featured in a Hollywood picture – albeit as the result of an evil voodoo master in Haiti rather than a condition passed on through bites, as in later

Rerun. Sir Walter Raleigh brought tobacco back to Britain from Virginia on 27th July 1586 – and, in so doing, triggered a craze for smoking, which at the time was considered a tonic for halitosis, and even a cure for cancer. Despite Queen Elizabeth I being an advocate for the new drug, it didn’t take