January 15, 1919. Boston PD receives a call: “Send all available rescue personnel...there's a wave of molasses coming down Commercial Street." The bizarre flood decimated Boston's North End. How di...
Editor’s note: This episode originally aired January 9, 2023. Lt. Col. Harry Stewart Jr. passed away in February 2025 at the age of 100. Lt. Col. James Harvey III still resides in New Jersey, now 1...
January 3, 1924. Archeologists crowd into an ancient Egyptian tomb to uncover what awaits them in the unopened burial chamber. The world is waiting to find out. That’s because two years before, the...
The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree has brought joy and sparkle to Midtown Manhattan since the early 1930s. The annual festivities may seem steady and timeless but this holiday icon actually has ...
December 27, 1853. On a freezing, snowy night in Birmingham, England, 2,000 people have lined up outside the town hall. They’ve braved the temperatures for a landmark performance, Charles Dickens’ ...
December 16, 1773. Samuel Adams sits in a crowded meeting of American colonists at Boston’s Old South Meeting House. He’s watching small groups of men slip quietly out the door. Once outside, the m...
December 18, 1970. Decades after the end of WWII, a Nazi doctor is on trial. Today is judgment day in a long, difficult legal battle, but this case isn’t about war crimes. The German pharmaceutical...
December 1, 1564. Spanish vessels left a secret port in Mexico about two weeks ago. Their goal: to sail across the Pacific and back, charting a new route for international trade, and giving Spain a...
November 30, 1954. At about 12:45 in the afternoon, a space rock comes plummeting through the roof of a house in Sylacauga, Alabama. It bounces off a stand-up radio, ricochets around the living roo...
November 16, 1776. George Washington rows toward Manhattan to inspect the fort that bears his name, only to meet a full-scale British assault already underway. By afternoon, Fort Washington has fal...
November 16, 1961. Fourteen college students from Iowa have driven nearly a thousand miles to the White House. They’re fasting, protesting, and calling for an end to nuclear bomb testing. These stu...
November 3, 1880. Congressman James Garfield wakes up on his quiet farm in Ohio to learn that he’s been elected President of the United States. He never campaigned to be on the ticket. He never wan...
October 28, 1895. It’s the first day of a murder trial in Philadelphia, and H.H. Holmes has been left to represent himself. His lawyers say they haven’t had time to prepare for his case, although t...
October 19, 1814. An eager audience files into the Holliday Street Theater in Baltimore, about to see a debut performance, described as a “much-admired new song.” The composer of this song, Francis...
October 24, 1945. The Charter of the United Nations is signed, promising to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Back when the charter was drafted a few months earlier in San Fran...
October, 1955. In living rooms across Denmark, children tear open the box of a brand-new toy: the LEGO System in Play. Inside are plastic bricks, a printed playmat of roads, little houses and trees...
October 11, 1955. Nearly three hundred of the Soviet Union’s top scientists sign a secret letter demanding the removal of one man: Trofim Lysenko. For decades, Lysenko had Joseph Stalin’s ear, ruli...
October 4, 1915. President Woodrow Wilson designates Dinosaur National Monument as a national historic site. That’s a big deal, right? There must’ve been a grand ribbon-cutting ceremony, maybe even...
September 27, 1986. You’re a kid in the mid-80s. You get home from school, flip on the TV, and see something strange: a commercial where a giant egg hatches behind a family’s console, revealing a t...
September 14, 1901. Midnight in the Adirondacks. A pounding knock at the door jolts Theodore and Edith Roosevelt awake. William McKinley is dead. Hours later, Theodore will be sworn in as the young...
