On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong (1893-1976) stood on the rostrum of Tian’anmen (The Gate of Heavenly Peace) and announced the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in his strong Hunanese accent. This momentous announcement marked the end of China’s chaotic era of foreign domination since the mid-18th century and of frequent governmental upheavals after 1911.

Written by Cruz Guan. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Video production by Laura Seeger and Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textual version of this video is available at https://origins.osu.edu/read/establishment-peoples-republic-china.

Learn More:

Chen, Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001

Dikötter, Frank. Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962. New York: Walker and Company, 2010.

Gao, Hua. Translated by Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian. How the Red Sun Rose: The Origins and Development of the Yan’an Rectification Movement, 1930–1945. The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2018.

Li, Zhisui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao. New York: Random House, 1994.

Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1991

Vogel, Ezra F. Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011.

Wang, Zheng. Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations. Columbia University Press, 2012.

This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.

In the late 1820s, Joel Roberts Poinsett introduced the poinsettia plant to Americans, who marveled at its foliage.

Written by Lindsay Schakenbach Regele. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. A textual version of this video is available at https://origins.osu.edu/read/poinsettia-day-monroe-doctrine-and-us-mexican-relations. Video production by Laura Seeger and Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle.

Learn More:

Flowers, Guns, and Money: Joel Roberts Poinsett and the Paradoxes of American Patriotism (University of Chicago Press, 2023)

Ana Romero-Valderrama, “La coalición pedracista: elecciones y rebeliones para una re-definición de la participación política en México (1826-1828)” (PhD. Diss. Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologiìa, Mexico, 2011).

Jay Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2011).

María Eugenia Vázquez Semadeni, “Del mar a la política: Masonería en Nueva España, México, 1816-1823,” Revista de Estudios Históricos de la Masonería Latinoamericana y Caribeña (Dec. 2015)

Torcuato S. Di Tella, National Popular Politics in Early Independent Mexico, 1820-1847 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996).

United States' Mexican Company, Statement in relation to the United States' Mexican Company (Albany: Websters and Skinners, 1826).

This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.

Musicals have sought to bring history to life onstage, with varying degrees of creative license. These are our top ten musicals based on real-life people and events that have shaped the theatre.

Written by Lauren Henry. Video production by Laura Seeger and Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Narrated by Nicholas Breyfogle. A textual version of this podcast is available at https://origins.osu.edu/connecting-history/top-ten-historical-musicals.

This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.

In the Year of Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo negotiated independence from Belgium to the rhythm of the country’s greatest export: Congolese rumba. The wildly popular and meaningful genre became a soundtrack to global change.

Written by Emily Hardick. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Production by Laura Seeger and Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Video and text versions of this podcast are available at https://origins.osu.edu/article/year-of-africa-1960-rumba-pan-africanism-Kariba.

This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.

Additional Resources:

Elkins, Caroline. Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya. Toronto: CNIB, 2008.

Fanon, Frantz. Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays. New York: Grove, 1952.

Lee, Christopher J. Making a World after Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010.

Monson, Jamie. Africa's Freedom Railway: How a Chinese Development Project Changed Lives and Livelihoods in Tanzania. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.

Phiri, Kings M. Malawi in Crisis: the 1959/60 Nyasaland State of Emergency and Its Legacy. Zomba, Malawi: Kachere, 2012.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Colonialism and Neocolonialism. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1964.

Tischler, Julia. Light and Power for a Multiracial Nation: the Kariba Dam Scheme in the Central African Federation. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Collinet, Georges. “Hidden Meanings in Congo Music.” Afropop Worldwide, December 21, 2011. https://afropop.org/audio-programs/hidden-meanings-in-congo-music.

Gondola, Didier. The History of Congo. Westport, Conn: Greenwood, 2002.

Kazadi, Pierre Cary (Kazadi wa Mukuna). “The Genesis of Urban Music in Zaïre.” African Music 7, no. 2 (1992): 72–84.

Nzongola-Ntalaja, Georges. Patrice Lumumba. First edition. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2014.

White, Bob W. Rumba Rules: The Politics of Dance Music in Mobutu’s Zaire. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008.

Iwa Dworkin, Congo Love Song: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State (University of North Carolina Press, 2017)

Kevin K. Gaines, American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and The Civil Rights Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2006)

James Meriwether, Proudly We Can Be Africans: Black Americans and Africa, 1935-1961 (University of North Carolina Press, 2002)

Alice in Wonderland, the little girl created by Oxford mathematician and logician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, also known as Lewis Carroll, came to life in 1865. While her pinafore and his frockcoat and long wavy hair, which were old fashioned even for their time, catch our eye and distance them from us on the other side of the tumultuous 20th century, our ear tells us a very different story.

Written by Stephanie Lovett. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Video and text versions of this podcast are available at https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/october-2015-everyone-s-inner-child-turns-150-years-old. Video production by Laura Seeger and Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle.

This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.

Few phenomena are so steeped in wonder as the total solar eclipse. Cultures through history have heralded eclipses as portentous, ominous events.

Written by Matthew Smith. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Video and text versions of this podcast are available at https://origins.osu.edu/read/solar-eclipses-american-history. Video production by Laura Seeger and Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle.

This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.

The date, October 23, 1956, marked the beginning of the ill-fated revolution that ended with the re-imposition of Communist rule and the flight of some 200,000 Hungarians to Western Europe and the United States. It remains a somber anniversary of heroism in defeat that continues to resonate with Hungarians across the globe.

Written by Harrison King. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Video and textual versions of this podcast are available at https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/october-2016-remembering-56-hungarian-revolution-sixty. Video production by Katherine Weiss, Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle, and Laura Seeger.

This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.

Public memory of the battle for Manila includes a mixture of gratitude toward the Americans, nationalistic defiance, and horror. The liberation claimed the lives of a thousand Americans, 16,000 Japanese, and 100,000 Manileños, one tenth of the population.

Written by Gregory Kupsky. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Video and textual versions of this podcast are available at https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/february-2015-battle-manila. Production by Katherine Weiss, Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle, and Laura Seeger.

This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.

On December 18, 1898, the Jeantaud electric vehicle set the world’s first automotive land speed record of 63.13 km/hr (39.2 mph) over the course of a single kilometer. Although the only electric vehicle at the competition, the Jeantaud handily beat its gasoline-powered competition at the Parc Agricole d’Achères outside Paris. The Jeantaud electric car of 1898 reminds us that electric vehicles once were superior to gasoline cars. If they beat the gasoline competition before, perhaps one day they’ll dominate again.

Written by Jennifer Eaglin. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Audio production by Katherine Weiss, Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle, and Laura Seeger. Video and textual versions of this podcast are available at https://origins.osu.edu/read/jeantaud-electric-car-land-speed-record.

Learn more:

Massimo Guarinieri, “When Cars Went Electric, Part 1” IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine (March 2011), 62.

Massimo Guarinieri, “When Cars Went Electric, pt2” IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine Vol. 5 Issue 2 (Jun2011), p46.

Gijs Mom, The Electric Vehicle: Technology and Expectations in the Automobile Age translated by Jenny Wormer (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).

“December 18, 1898- The first automobile land speed record is set;” https://automotivehistory.org/first-automobile-land-speed-record/

Ernest H. Wakefield, History of the Electric Automobile (SAE International, 1994).

Carl Sulzberger, “Early road warrior, part 2, competing electric and gasoline vehicles,” IEEE power & energy magazine (September/October 2004).

Paul Ingrassia, Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013).

IEA, Top 5 barriers to EV adoption reported by EV100 member companies, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/top-5-barriers-to-ev-adoption-reported-by-ev100-member-companies, IEA. Licence: CC BY 4.0.

David Roberts, “The Road to Mass EV Adoption: Three Barriers To a Sustainable Future” Forbes Technology Council (August 30, 2023) https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2023/08/30/the-road-to-mass-ev-adoption-three-barriers-to-a-sustainable-future/?sh=3aaaef712293 As accessed 27 November 2023.

After World War II, canned foods became more and more common, along with a smorgasbord of other pre-prepared, processed foods: Jellos, TV dinners, frozen peas, dehydrated juices, and eventually Tangs. On May 12th, 1965, Donald Goerke invented SpaghettiOs, the round, canned cousins of spaghetti. By 2010, over 150 million cans of SpaghettiOs were sold each year; put another way, on average, 720 million Os are consumed every day.

Written by Aaron George. Narration by Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle. Textual and video versions of this podcast are available at https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/may-2015-spaghetti-age-mechanical-reproduction. Audio and video production by Laura Seeger, Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle, and Katherine Weiss.

This is a production of Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective at the Goldberg Center in the Department of History at The Ohio State University and the Department of History at Miami University. Be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive updates about our videos and podcasts. For more information about Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, please visit origins.osu.edu.