Martians invaded New Jersey on CBS Radio on 30th October, 1938, when Orson Welles' War of the Worlds delighted and confused a generation of Americans.  The fictional news bulletins sounded terrifyingly real, and many listeners missed the disclaimer stating it was just a play. But radio was a burgeoning medium, and Americans were still feeling the strain of the Great Depression, and feared becoming embroiled in World War II, so were perhaps pre-disposed to panic when their primary news source...

The ‘jewel heist of the Century’ occurred at the American Museum of Natural History, New York on 29th October, 1964. Florida surfer ‘Murph the Surf’ and his accomplices, Allan Kuhn and Roger Clark, stole priceless gems, including the Star of India, worth over $3 million today. The lax security at the institution, along with non-functional alarms and reduced staff, made the theft relatively easy - but the perceived glamour and audacity of the operation caught America’s attention, as the...

Jonathan Swift’s enduring satire Gulliver’s Travels was first published on October 28, 1726 - though the true identity of the book’s author was concealed from readers. A spoof of Daniel Defoe’s popular Robinson Crusoe, the novel bleakly satirised British society, colonialism, and the monarchy, shocking as many readers as it entertained. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly reveal the tale’s rebellious origins in Swift’s social oeuvre; consider why children still relate to (abridged...

Rerun: The ‘Teapot Dome scandal’ reached its climax when Senator Albert Fall was found guilty of bribery, fined $100,000 and sent to jail on 25th October, 1929. During the Presidency of Warren G Harding, Fall had been offering private companies the chance to drill for oil on state land, without competitive bidding, in return for bags cash. And some farm animals.  In this episode, Arion, Olly and Rebecca reveal the unheroic role of newspapers in suppressing the scandal; pick apart the realism...

rerun: Mr Blobby made his anarchic television debut on 24th October, 1992, in a new segment called “Gotcha” on the hugely popular BBC show Noel’s House Party. The googly eyed, perma-grinning, yellow and pink character was an immediate hit, selling masses of merchandise to British kids and adults alike. At the height of Blobbymania, Mr Blobby released a No. 1 UK single and spawned four theme parks around the country. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly defend Mr Blobby against the haters;...

When Steve Jobs took to the stage in Cupertino on 23rd October, 2001, he unveiled Apple’s first portable device: the iPod. As ever, his pitch was simple and on-point: "1,000 songs in your pocket." But the iPod wasn't Jobs’s creation. Its concept came from Tony Fadell, an amateur DJ who’d grown frustrated by lugging his music collection to gigs. Apple saw the potential for a hardware system that could work as an entry-point to iTunes. By the time the iPod was eventually discontinued in 2022,...

Arion, Rebecca and Olly investigate the story of Dr. Hawley Crippen, convicted of murdering his wife, music hall performer Cora Crippen, on 22nd October, 1910. Cora’s corpse had been discovered in their Holloway cellar - but homoeopath Crippen had fled to America with his lover Ethel Lenev dressed as a boy. However, the Captain of the SS Montrose became suspicious of their behaviour, and wirelessly telegraphed Scotland Yard to arrest the pair upon arrival in Canada. In this episode, the...

The Battle of Sekigahara, on 21st October, 1600, was the largest in Japanese feudal history, with over 160,000 troops involved. And stakes were high: the victor, Tokugawa Ieyasu, became the Shōgun of Japan, initiating the Edo period; whilst the leader of the losing Western army, Ishida Mitsunari, was beheaded. The battle itself was chaotic, partly due to defections, with several commanders secretly switching sides, leading to confusion and collapse. But, despite the battle’s inclusion of...

Rerun: When Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross failed to reach their celebrity guest, 78 year-old ‘Fawlty Towers’ star Andrew Sachs, they instead left him a series of answerphone messages, joking about sexual encounters with Sachs's granddaughter, Georgina Baillie. The segment aired on Brand’s Radio 2 show on 18th October, 2008, and became the third most-complained about programme in recent BBC history. The presenters were suspended, the station controller resigned, and the BBC was fined...

Rerun: The London Beer Flood, which created a 15ft-high wave of booze, and claimed the lives of eight people, began on 17th October, 1814 - when an iron hoop came loose on a giant barrel at Meux’s famous Horse Shoe Brewery. The barrel, in which over a million pints of fermenting porter were brewing, exploded - triggering a chain reaction that effectively blew up the factory and caused bricks to rain down over a nearby slum area. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly revisit the only...

Wu Zetian became China's first and only female Emperor on 16th October, 655 - cementing an extraordinary rise from Concubine to Secretary to Consort to Queen. On the day of her coronation in 690, a massive earthquake rocked China, a supposed sign of divine disapproval. But Wu flipped the narrative, declaring that the upheaval was a blessing, a symbol of Buddhist paradise manifesting on earth.  Her path to power was unconventional, defying deeply entrenched Confucian ideals that regarded...

The Secret of Monkey Island, one of the best loved video games of the point-and-click era, was released on the 15th October, 1990, without, it must be said, a great deal of fanfare. Inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland and the novel On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers, the game was a swashbuckling piratical adventure which – unusually for gaming of the time – put laughs above thrills. Despite its initially mixed reaction, it went on to become a sleeper hit that a...

Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, published on 14th October, 1892, was the collection of 12 stories that took his much-loved titular detective from the pages of magazine serials and on to the world’s bookshelves. The inspiration for Holmes, who solves crimes through science rather than chance, came from Dr. Joseph Bell, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, who impressed Conan Doyle with his keen powers of deduction. The progressive edge to the stories also set...

Rerun: 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, a bottle shaped like Pamela Anderson, and product placement on ‘Friends’ - the beverage never took off...

Rerun: Scent-o-Vision, an in-cinema olfactory experience, was unveiled at the New York World’s Fair on 10th October, 1940. Accompanying a short film ‘My Dream’, its Swiss inventor, Hans Laube, pumped in aromas of rose water, peaches and burning incense for his wowed attendees to sniff. But it would be two decades before the technology was finally put into a feature film - Mike Todd, Jr’s ‘Scent of Mystery’, in 1960 - and never used again. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly revisit the...

The world's oldest oldest continuously surviving constitution, was adopted in the tiny country of San Marino on 8th October, 1600. This was a good 187 years before the United States adopted its own constitution and, during his presidency, Abraham Lincoln frequently held San Marino up as the model of a government founded on republican principles. Such ongoing praise eventually earnt the US president honorary San Marino citizenship! In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly explain what an...

A boatload of Swedish identical twins, aged 11 to 80, descended into Felixstowe on 7th October, 1977 - wearing matching outfits - for a shopping trip.  The eye-catching stunt was part of a scientific project led by ship captain Sune Dahlström, a twin himself, in collaboration with the Swedish Twin Register at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and aimed to study the similarities and differences in their behaviours. Twin studies have a long history, with dark roots in Victorian eugenics...

Rerun: 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, Hooters was hit by rival ‘breastaurants’ Tilted Kilt and Twin Peaks, and a slow generational shift away from ‘male’ environments in which...

Rerun: The Roy half of Siegfried and Roy was mauled on October 3rd, 2003, by a 380-pound white tiger live on stage in Las Vegas. Roy lived, but was partially paralysed, which spelled the end for the wildly successful double act, which had performed more than 30,000 shows for 50 million people and generated well over $1 billion in ticket sales over nearly half a century. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly explore how opulence, German accents and mullets proved a winning formula for...

Secretive Catholic sect Opus Dei was founded on 2nd October, 1928 by the young, energetic priest Jose Maria Escriva, who believed his divine mission was to inject religious fervour into everyday life, with holiness achieved not via clergy, but from the daily work of laypeople.  The faith grew rapidly in Spain, especially during the Franco era, eventually spreading internationally. But its ties to right-wing governments, including those of Franco and Pinochet, sparked criticism; and its...

Tobe Hooper’s legendary low-budget horror film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, first screened in Austin on 1st October, 1974. The movie was an international sensation - making £21.9 million from its £100,000 budget in its first year - although not in the UK, where it was not screened nationally for 25 years, due to the BBFC’s concerns about its portrayal of suffering and violence against women. In this episode, The Retrospectors unpick the picture’s gruesome reputation, given that much of the...

How did tea become Britain’s national drink? Its story begins in China, where it was first popularised during the Han and Tang dynasties - but it first made its mark in London’s coffee houses on 30th September, 1658, when it was advertised to the public in a ‘newsbook’, marketing the exotic beverage as "an excellent and by all physicians approved China drink". However, British tea importers faced stiff competition from the beer industry, which wasn’t thrilled about losing customers to this...

Journalists, exhibitors and producers packed the Ambassador Hotel Theater, Los Angeles on 27th September, 1922 - to see the first ever paid-for screening of a 3-D film, ‘The Power Of Love’. Using an anaglyph system (meaning the 3-D glasses had two tinted lenses; one red, one green), viewers were told they could select a happy or sad ending - by closing one of their eyes. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly consider if the costs of double-projector movies explains why first-gen 3-D never...

Rerun: Jean Bernadotte’s dad, a local prosecutor in the southwestern French city of Pau, intended for his son to follow in his footsteps as a lawyer. Instead, Jean became heir to the Swedish Crown on September 26th, 1810, and his descendants still sit on the Swedish throne to this day. Shortly after he moved to Sweden, the new crown prince was joined by his wife, Désirée, and their 11-year-old son, Oscar. But it's fair to say Désirée wasn’t exactly enamoured with the new land her husband was...