Episodes

The Pope finally defined the dogma of The Immaculate Conception on 8th December, 1854; confirming that, in the view of the Catholic Church, Christ’s mother Mary had not only been ‘full of grace’, but was completely absent of sin even at her own conception. Even though this had been an unofficial concept for centuries prior, […]

The most famous photograph of Earth – the ‘Blue Marble’ shot captured by NASA astronauts on Apollo 17 – was taken on 7th December, 1972.  The deep blues of the ocean, the green continent of Africa, the yellow edges of the Arabian Peninsula, and the vast empty blackness all around our planet are memorably captured

The Rolling Stones topped the bill at Altamont Speedway in Livermore, California on 6th December, 1969 – a free festival intended to rival the recent Woodstock in New York. But it was an organisational shambles, and turned deadly when an audience member was murdered.  Notorious gang Hell’s Angels had been hired (allegedly in return for

James Christie held his first auction on 5th December, 1766 – billed as a sale of “genuine household furniture, jewels, plate, firearms, china and a large quantity of madeira and high flavoured claret” belonging to a “Noble Personage (deceased)”. His auction-house, Christie’s, went on to become one of the world’s leading dealers of fine art.

Sir Christopher Wren was officially appointed architect for the rebuilding of St Paul’s Cathedral on 2nd December, 1697, though in truth he had been advising on it for some years already. Three decades later the celebrated British architect had produced a building that broke radically with the past, even if his original plans had to

Rerun. Thousands of beer barrels were emptied into the streets across Lancashire on 1st December, 1900 – when it finally dawned on people that the cheap stout they’d been drinking with years was in fact contaminated with arsenic.  Over 6,000 victims were poisoned, mostly across Manchester and Salford, thanks to the practice of padding out

On 30th November, 1803 a surgeon called Dr Francisco Javier de Balmis left Spain at the head of the world’s first ever international public health expedition.  His ship was bound for the New World, supplied with smallpox vaccines. But the vaccines weren’t in syringes or in vials, they were inside the 22 orphans who were

Shortly after US president John F. Kennedy was shot dead, the Warren Commission was convened on 29th November, 1963 to answer the question on everybody’s lips: who did this and why? The shooting of America’s young president was a moment of trauma for many Americans, but when the commission returned its findings, most people were

Towards the end of 1983, frenzied parents battled with one another in stores across the US in a desperate bid to buy their children the toy of the moment, the Cabbage Patch Kid. The so-called Cabbage Patch Riots culminated on 28th November 1983 at a Zayre department store in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, when a melee broke

Elián González was just five years old when he was found clinging to an inner tube off the coast of Florida on 25th November, 1999. His mother, step-father, and all the other Cuban migrants who had been attempting to cross to the United States with him were lost at sea. Elián’s future then became a