Podcasts

Accused of planning the assassination of her cousin Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots stood trial for treason on 14th October, 1586. Mary’s coded letters, delivered to her co-conspirators in beer barrels, had been intercepted by Sir Francis Walsingham, who had deciphered and copied them and built a case against the former Scottish monarch. In […]

The first ever U.S. officer to be convicted of treason, Army Lieutenant Martin J. Monti Jr., defected from the Air Service to the Nazis on 13th October, 1944. After a stint in radio propaganda, he joined the Waffen-SS, was recaptured by the Americans, and then claimed to be a prisoner of War. His family petitioned

The world’s most famous adult magazine went ‘SFW’ on 12th October, 2015 – when Scott Flanders, then Playboy’s chief executive, announced that future editions would no longer contain full nudity. The change lasted for only one year. ‘Reading it for the articles’ had, at one time, been a plausible option – the magazine had published

Virgin Cola, Sir Richard Branson’s ultimately flawed contender in the Cola Wars, was certainly taken seriously by the competition. On 11th October 1994, a pokerfaced Coca-Cola spokesperson told The Independent: “Consumers consistently demonstrate, when given a free choice, that they prefer our product. ”Despite an extensive publicity campaign – including a stunt in Times Square,

Hairdressers descended upon Oxford Street on October 8th, 1906 to witness Karl Nessler’s first public demonstration of his pioneering new ‘perm’ – a style which didn’t have its heyday until some eighty years later. Creating a long-lasting curl had been a goal for many stylists over the decades, but Nessler had hit upon a winning

Ron Popeil, inventor of The Pocket Fisherman, the Amazing Smokeless Ashtray, and the Inside-The-Shell Egg Scrambler, was (satirically) awarded an Ignoble Award for Consumer Engineering on 7th November, 1993. But the ‘Infomercial King’ had spun an enviable career from his talent for selling; from humble beginnings shilling vegetable choppers on the shop floor of Woolworth’s

Agatha Christie’s ‘The Mousetrap’, the world’s longest-running play, opened at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham on 6th October, 1952. Producer, Peter Saunders predicted the production would run for 14 months. Over 28,000 performances later, the show has become an iconic attraction in London’s West End – with a set that still includes the original mantelpiece clock

The ‘Women’s March’ of 1789 began spontaneously, when a market trader banged a drum in a Parisian square on 5th October – launching a chain of events which would eventually end a century of Versailles rule and lead to the execution of Louis XVI. Initially a reaction to the grain shortage that had left Parisians

Hooters, the beach bar chain famous for its flirtatious waitresses, first flung open its doors in Clearwater, Florida on 4th October, 1983. Its publicity-friendly ‘Hooters Girls’ – and a chance visit by John Riggins, star fullback for the Washington Redskins – ensured the concept took off, spawning 425 outlets in 30 countries. However, more recently,

A 12 x 8.5cm ‘Correspondenzkarte’, the earliest progenitor of the modern-day postcard, was created by the Austrian Post on 1st October, 1869. Cheaper and more practical than sending long-form letters, the new medium was an instant sensation with the public – with three million postcards being sent in the first three months. But cultural conservatives