Podcasts

When Bill Wilson met Dr Robert Smith on 12th May, 1935, they could not have known that the 12-step plan they’d devised for treating addiction would spawn the world’s largest support group.    Despite their initially low success rate, they persisted to aid recovering alcoholics and their names went down in history – to the […]

At a cost of £2m, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical ‘Cats’ premiered at the New London Theatre on 11th May, 1981 – and the world had never seen anything like it.    With a cast including Brian Blessed and Elaine Paige, the original production was innovative, sexy, creepy, bizarre – and an enormous gamble for the

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

The theft of Edvard Munch’s iconic painting ‘The Scream’ sullied the opening day of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer – but, on 7th May, 1994, the iconic work was recovered.   The painting, which has been stolen multiple times, was returned on this occasion thanks to the involvement of Britain’s Metropolitan Police – and the

Queen Victoria thrilled the locals with a personal appearance on May 6th 1882, to dedicate Epping Forest, near London, as ‘the people’s forest’.    It was a pivotal moment in the preservation of green space for public recreation – as industrialisation around the capital lead to increasing swathes of land being developed for profit. In

It was standing room only at Birmingham Town Hall on May 5, 1964 – the day legendary anti-smut campaigner Mary Whitehouse launched her ‘Clean Up TV’ campaign.   Claiming the BBC’s Director-General was “responsible for the moral collapse in this country”, she went on to attract 366,355 signatures to her petition opposing the “disbelief, doubt

Thirteen years before ever being broadcast, the Grammys took their first steps into rock n’ roll history on May 4, 1959 – when, curiously, they were held in two separate cities on the same night.   If you were a fan of rock n’roll, however, you’d have been sorely disappointed by the winners – ‘Tequila’

Eva Gabor’s appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on May 3rd, 1966 introduced the party game ‘Twister’ to an appreciative nation.  Previously considered too racy for toy distributors, who nicknamed it ‘sex in a box’, the game went on to sell an astonishing three million copies in that year alone. But it was

Revisiting remarkable moments from history – with considerably less respect than that suggests. new daily entertainment show from Olly Mann, Rebecca Messina, and Arion McNicoll.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.