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Best Daily Podcast (British Podcast Awards 2023 nominee). Ten minute daily episodes bringing you curious moments from this day in history, with Olly Mann, Rebecca Messina and Arion McNicoll: The Retrospectors. It's history, but not as you know it! New eps Mon-Wed; reruns Thurs/Fri; Sunday exclusives at Patreon.com/Retrospectors and for Apple Subscribers.
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Rerun: Winona Ryder was arrested for shoplifting from Saks Fifth Avenue, Beverly Hills on 12th December, 2001. Amongst the products she had stuffed into her hat was a Marc Jacobs sweater worth $760, and Frederic Fekkai hair adornments listed at $600. At first, the Oscar nominated actress claimed she had been under the impression that her assistant …
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Mobile game Angry Birds debuted on the App Store on 11th December, 2009. The quirky and fun cartoonish characters and addictive gameplay found fans - but it took Apple featuring the app as their ‘Game of the Week’ in early 2010 for the Finnish creation to become a cultural juggernaut, catapulting mobile gaming into the mainstream. Angry Birds wasn’…
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On 10th December, 1907, angry medical students and animal rights activists were clashing over a controversial bronze statue of a brown terrier who had been dissected at University College London in 1903, revealing violations of animal experimentation regulations. The ‘brown dog’ case fuelled the anti-vivisection movement, kickstarting a fundraising…
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Alfred Tennyson’s ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ was first published on 9th December, 1854, in The Examiner. Tennyson had penned the poem shortly after reading a dramatic account in The Times of the disastrous charge, which occurred during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War. Its rhythmic cadence, mimicking the galloping charge, made it b…
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Rerun: A female contestant had never scooped the jackpot on an American TV quiz show before New York psychologist Dr Joyce Brothers won $64,000 on 6th December, 1955. Her specialist subject was boxing - a topic about which she knew little, until she devoted herself to studying the annals of the sport in preparation for multiple appearances on the s…
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Rerun: 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.…
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A 245 million years old fossil named Nyasasaurus parringtoni was officially determined the earliest known dinosaur on 4th December, 2012; meaning dinosaurs had roamed the Earth at least 10 million years earlier than the previously believed "dawn of the dinosaurs." Unearthed in Tanzania in the 1930s and mostly ignored for decades, the fossil’s story…
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Renowned detective novelist Agatha Christie found herself at the centre of a real-life mystery: when she mysteriously disappeared for 11 days, from 3rd December, 1926. Shortly after learning of her husband's infidelity, Christie had driven away from the family home, abandoning her car near a quarry. There was a massive manhunt as theories circulate…
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Enron—the seventh-largest company in the U.S.—filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on 2nd December, 2001, marking the dramatic end of a business empire once hailed as unstoppable. What once looked like a financial juggernaut turned out to be a house of cards built on illusory profits, market manipulation, and sheer audacity. “Creative” accounting, inclu…
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Rerun: Supersonic aircraft took a giant leap forward when the French and British governments signed a treaty to join forces on designing Concorde on 29th November, 1962. Up until this point, the two countries had been developing their aircraft separately - which had already cost the United Kingdom £150 million. Technologically superior and far more…
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Rerun: 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 out that was so inte…
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Aerosmith, 50 Cent and Tom Petty starred at 13 year old Elizabeth Brooks’ $10 million bat mitzvah party on 27th November, 2005. The lavish do, at New York’s legendary Rainbow Rooms, became a symbol of extreme extravagance, and triggered an investigation into her father, David H. Brooks. Brooks had been CEO of a military body armour company that thr…
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Arion, Rebecca and Olly recall the founding of The Kappa Alpha Society, the oldest continuously existing college fraternity, established as a literary society at Union College, New York on 26th November, 1825. The founders, led by John Hart Hunter, sought camaraderie and intellectual discussions, creating a forum where they could break free from th…
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When The White Ship hit a rock near Barfleur on 25th November, 1120, she sank, killing all 300 noblemen on-board. Among the dead was Henry I’s one legitimate son, William Adelin, plunging the English throne into a dynastic crisis. Like the Titanic, the vessel was considered the epitome of safety and prestige for its time, Captained by Thomas FitzSt…
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Rerun: Capt. James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and Lt. Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) embraced and kissed on "Plato’s Stepchildren"; an episode of ‘Star Trek’ broadcast on 22nd November, 1968 - just a year after the Supreme Court declared interracial marriage to be legal. However, despite popular belief that this was TV’s first interracial kiss, it w…
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Rerun: La Ronde, the USA’s first revolving restaurant, opened on 21st November, 1961, at the Ala Moana Center in Honolulu. On the menu in the 298ft-tall tower was shrimp cocktail, mahi-mahi, and ‘the Queen of beefdom’. It had a predecessor, though, in perhaps an unlikely city: post-war Dortmund, Germany. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly tra…
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Beethoven's first attempt at opera, Leonore, premiered in Vienna on 20th November, 1805. Attendance was sparse, due in part to Napoleon's recent invasion: the audience largely composed of French officers. And, unlike almost all his other work, the piece still has a reputation as ‘A Director’s Graveyard’. Why? Possibly because the setting - a jail -…
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Arion, Rebecca and Olly pore over the astonishing career of football legend Pelé, who (by his own count, if not FIFA’s) scored his 1,000th goal on 19th November, 1969. Smashing racial barriers, Pelé was the first black player to grace the cover of LIFE magazine; played a pivotal role in Brazil's triumphs at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, the 1962 Wo…
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King Louis XIV underwent risky surgery to remove a painful anal fistula on 18th November, 1686: an event that created a sensation at court, leading to 1686 being declared the ‘year of the fistula’. Louis’s choice to undergo such a dangeous procedure signalled an unspoken endorsement of surgery, bringing it a semblance of respectability - though the…
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Rerun: Anne Bonny and Mary Read - the most notorious women to swashbuckle and plunder in the ‘golden age of piracy’ - were captured near Jamaica by pirate-hunter Jonathan Barnet on 8th November, 1720. Disguised as men for most of their careers, they sailed (and cavorted) with Pirate Captain ‘Calico Jack’. But, when their crimes came to trial, they …
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Rerun: The Royal Wedding between Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips on 14th November, 1973 was a lavish affair at Westminster Abbey, with an anticipated global audience of 500 million - but the 23 year-old daughter of the Queen was clearly awkward about being the centre of attention, and asked to be only filmed from behind. Labelled ‘Princess …
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Amityville is synonymous with horror movies, but that’s because of a real-life tragedy that happened on 13th November, 1974, when Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered his parents and his four younger siblings. Initially, he claimed a mob hitman was responsible, but later confessed to the crimes. After the murders, newlyweds George and Kathy Lutz moved in to t…
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Arion, Rebecca and Olly recall the events of 12th November, 1970, when the coastal town of Florence, Oregon faced a dilemma: the 8-ton dead sperm whale washed up on its shores, emitting a putrid stench that had become unbearable for residents. George Thornton, a Department of Transportation engineer, proposed an unconventional solution: detonating …
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Joseph "Blueskin" Blake was hanged on 11th November, 1724. His notoriety as a highwayman was due in large part to his network of criminal associates, including ‘London’s most glamorous rogue’ Jack Sheppard (who inspired Gay’s Beggars Opera) and ‘Thief-Taker General’, Jonathan Wilde. Under the guise of law enforcement, Wilde had charged victims for …
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Rerun: Kylie Minogue and Jason Donavan’s characters in hit soap opera ‘Neighbours’ were wed in 1988, causing a shopping mall riot in Australia, and attracting an astonishing 20 million viewers to the UK transmission on 8th November. Soundtracked entirely by Angry Anderson’s surging power ballad ‘Suddenly’, the ceremony quickly became an iconic mome…
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