Dave Does History

On October 2, 1766, Nottingham’s famous Goose Fair turned from lively market to full-blown riot, and the cause was cheese. Prices had doubled, merchants were buying up entire wagonloads to haul away, and the townsfolk decided they would not stand for it. What followed was chaos, with stalls overturned, cheeses seized, and wheels rolled through the streets like weapons. The mayor, Robie Swann, tried to stop it and ended up sprawled on the cobblestones after being knocked flat by a rolling cheese.

The humor of the scene hides the desperation that drove it. Soldiers were called in, shots were fired, and a farmer named William Eggleston lost his life. Nottingham’s riot was part of a national wave of food protests, born from hunger and a demand for justice. In this episode we explore how a fairground skirmish over cheese revealed the fierce struggle of ordinary people to survive.

In the early hours of October 1, 1910, downtown Los Angeles was rocked by an explosion that tore through the Los Angeles Times building. The blast, fueled by dynamite hidden in a suitcase and ignited by barrels of ink and ruptured gas lines, turned the newsroom into an inferno. Twenty-one people were killed and more than a hundred injured. The city awoke not only to smoke and rubble, but to the opening act of what newspapers quickly called the crime of the century.

At the heart of it all was the long and bitter war between organized labor and the open shop crusade led by Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis. The McNamara brothers, backed by the Iron Workers Union, carried out the attack, and their capture set the stage for a sensational trial featuring Clarence Darrow. The fallout reshaped Los Angeles, crushed union hopes, and left scars on the American labor movement for decades.

In May 1774, Virginia stepped onto the stage of defiance and never looked back. When the House of Burgesses called for fasting and prayer in solidarity with Boston, Governor Lord Dunmore tried to silence them by dissolving the assembly. The Burgesses refused to be silenced. They gathered in the Apollo Room of the Raleigh Tavern, turning a tavern meeting into a spark of revolution. Dave and Bill explore how this act of defiance carried into the Virginia Association, a bold economic boycott that risked fortunes but strengthened unity. Benjamin Harrison, though not as fiery as Patrick Henry or Thomas Jefferson, emerged as a steady leader who understood sacrifice was necessary for liberty. These struggles fed directly into the Declaration of Independence, where Jefferson captured the same grievances Virginians had lived through. The episode reminds us that resistance often begins not in grand halls, but in ordinary rooms filled with extraordinary resolve.

In September 1918, the First World War was nearing its end, but no one on the Western Front could be certain of that. The German Army still clung to the Hindenburg Line, a massive belt of fortifications stretching across northern France. At St. Quentin Canal, this line was at its strongest, defended by concrete bunkers, deep wire, and the canal itself, which served as a natural moat. For years, German commanders had called it impregnable.

On September 29, Allied forces tested that claim. Americans, Australians, and British troops attacked together in one of the largest assaults of the war. The fighting was brutal and confused, but by nightfall the canal had been crossed, the defenses shattered, and German morale fatally broken. The breach convinced German leaders that victory was impossible. The Battle of St. Quentin Canal became the decisive moment that brought the Great War to its closing chapter.

When most of us hear the name “Good King Wenceslas,” we think of the Christmas carol that paints him as a benevolent monarch who braved the snow to help a poor man. The truth, however, is far darker and far more fascinating. Wenceslaus I was not a king but a duke of Bohemia, ruling in the early tenth century at a time when the nation stood at a crossroads between Christianity and pagan tradition, between independence and submission to stronger neighbors.

His reign was brief but significant. He strengthened the church, aligned Bohemia with Western Christendom, and kept the peace with the German kings through tribute. These choices secured stability, but they also earned him enemies among the nobility and, fatally, within his own family. On September 28, 935, he was betrayed and murdered by his brother Boleslav. That act of violence transformed Wenceslaus into a martyr, a saint, and an enduring national symbol.

On September 27, 1941, long before American troops landed on foreign shores, a different kind of weapon was launched in Baltimore. The SS Patrick Henry, the first Liberty ship, slid into the water at the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard as bands played and President Franklin Roosevelt’s words echoed over the radio. It was a plain freighter, built not for beauty but for speed, economy, and purpose. Roosevelt admitted it looked like an ugly duckling, yet he knew what it represented.

The Patrick Henry was the beginning of something extraordinary. From that first ship came a fleet of 2,710 vessels that carried food, fuel, and troops across oceans filled with danger. They turned the tide in the Battle of the Atlantic and became the bridge of ships that made Allied victory possible.

Today we look back at the Patrick Henry and the Liberty fleet she began, ships that proved industry itself could win a war.

On September 26, 1580, the people of Plymouth looked out to sea and saw a battered ship limping into the harbor. Her sails were patched, her timbers worn, and her crew thinned by years of hardship. Yet she carried a story that would change the course of England’s future. This was the Golden Hind, commanded by Francis Drake, and she had just completed a voyage that no Englishman had ever dared attempt.

For nearly three years, Drake and his men had circled the globe, raiding Spanish treasure ships, braving unknown waters, and seizing prizes that filled their holds with silver, jewels, and spices. Now, against all odds, they had returned. The arrival of the Golden Hind was more than a triumphant homecoming. It was a challenge to Spain’s power and a bold declaration that England was ready to claim its place on the world stage.

On the morning of September 25, 1911, the French battleship Liberté lay quietly at anchor in Toulon harbor. The fleet was already grieving the loss of sailors from a smaller accident aboard the cruiser Gloire, and preparations for their funeral were underway. At first light, there was no reason to expect anything but another routine day. Then smoke began to curl from Liberté’s forward turret, followed by small blasts that sent rescue boats rushing to her side. Eighteen minutes later, a cataclysmic explosion ripped the battleship apart and shook the city. More than two hundred men were dead, hundreds more injured, and the harbor was littered with wreckage and bodies. The cause was not sabotage or enemy action but something far more damning: a fatal flaw in the very powder that armed the French fleet. This was France’s deadliest peacetime naval disaster, and its story is unforgettable.

When John Marshall became Chief Justice in 1801, the Supreme Court was little more than a formality. It met in cramped quarters beneath the Capitol, ignored by presidents and forgotten by the public. Over the next thirty four years, Marshall would transform that overlooked institution into a powerful branch of government.

Marshall had already lived many lives. He was a soldier in the Revolution, a lawyer in Virginia, a diplomat who refused to bow to French demands, and Secretary of State under John Adams. Yet it was on the bench that he left his deepest mark. Through landmark cases like Marbury v. Madison, McCulloch v. Maryland, and Gibbons v. Ogden, he gave the Constitution force and created the foundations of American law.

In 1943 a strange and daring plot unfolded in Canada, one that sounds like the script of a wartime thriller. Four of Germany’s most celebrated U-boat commanders, including Otto Kretschmer, the infamous “Tonnage King,” were being held at Camp 30 in Bowmanville, Ontario. Behind the fences they hatched an audacious escape plan. They would dig tunnels, slip across Canada, and meet a German submarine waiting on the coast of New Brunswick. The plan was called Operation Kiebitz, and it had the full backing of Admiral Karl Dönitz himself.

But what the prisoners never knew was that Canadian intelligence had been watching the entire time. Every coded letter, every smuggled map, every shovelful of dirt was being tracked. When the breakout came, the Canadians had their own counterplot ready, Operation Pointe Maisonnette. It was a contest of patience, deception, and nerve, and in the end it would be the Canadians who had the last word.