History Shorts

In August 1911, a starving man walked out of the foothills near Oroville, California—and into a world that believed his people had disappeared.

He became known as Ishi, a member of the Yahi people whose community had been devastated by disease, displacement, and violence during California's settlement.

Ishi was taken to San Francisco, where anthropologists studied his language, traditions, and knowledge while he lived at the University of California's museum. To the public, he became a sensation—the so-called "last wild Indian."

But behind that label was a man navigating profound loss while preserving what he could of his culture.

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The 1904 Olympic marathon may have been the strangest race in history.

Runners battled brutal heat, choking dust, and almost no drinking water. One competitor was chased off course by wild dogs. Another stopped along the way to eat rotten apples.

Then there was Thomas Hicks, whose trainers kept him moving with doses of strychnine, egg whites, and brandy.

And the apparent winner? Fred Lorz crossed the finish line first—after riding roughly eleven miles in a car.

Only 14 of 32 runners finished.

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In 1828, Queen Ranavalona I took the throne of Madagascar—and began one of the most controversial reigns in African history.

Determined to preserve Malagasy independence from growing European influence, Ranavalona expelled missionaries, restricted Christianity, resisted foreign powers, and fiercely defended traditional customs.

Her methods could be brutal. Forced labor, military campaigns, executions, and the infamous tangena ordeal contributed to enormous suffering and population loss.

European writers branded her the "Mad Queen of Madagascar," portraying her as a bloodthirsty tyrant. But that image was also shaped by missionaries and colonial interests hostile to a ruler who refused to open her kingdom to European control.

In this episode of History Shorts, we explore Ranavalona's violent 33-year reign—and ask whether the "Mad Queen" was a monster, an anti-colonial ruler, or something far more complicated.

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In 1910, Dearfield, Colorado, was founded on the High Plains as an agricultural community where Black Americans could build something largely denied to them elsewhere: land, independence, and economic opportunity.

Against difficult odds, Dearfield grew. Families farmed the surrounding land, businesses opened, and the settlement became one of the most important Black homesteading communities in the American West.

Then the economy collapsed.

Drought, falling crop prices, and the Great Depression devastated the town. Residents left in search of work, farms were abandoned, and a community that had once represented extraordinary optimism nearly disappeared.

In this episode of History Shorts, we tell the story of Dearfield—its remarkable rise, its painful decline, and how the ruins of one Colorado settlement preserve the story of Black pioneers, the closing American frontier, and a dream that the Great Depression helped bring to an end.

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At the turn of the twentieth century, America's food supply could be terrifying. Manufacturers routinely added chemicals and preservatives to food—with little regulation and few requirements to tell consumers what they were eating.

So government chemist Harvey Wiley conducted an extraordinary experiment.

Beginning in 1902, a group of young men volunteered to eat meals deliberately laced with substances like borax, formaldehyde, and salicylic acid. Newspapers gave them an unforgettable nickname: the Poison Squad.

The volunteers were carefully monitored as Wiley gathered evidence about what these additives did to the human body.

The experiment became a national sensation and helped build public support for federal food regulation.

In this episode of History Shorts, we tell the bizarre story of the men who volunteered to eat potentially dangerous chemicals—and how Harvey Wiley's Poison Squad helped pave the way for the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the modern FDA.

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When Americans watched fascists march down Main Street in the 1930s, they told themselves it was a European import—new, foreign, un-American.

Joseph Kelly says that story is wrong.

In The Biggest Lie: The Prehistory of American Fascism, 1818–1915, Kelly traces a homegrown political tradition from the Missouri crisis through a Southern police state and Jim Crow, then out across the nation after the Spanish-American War as Anglo-Saxon nationalism: the claim that this country belongs to a master race. By 1915, he argues, the Confederacy was gone. The lie had gone national.

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Ben Macintyre joins History Shorts to discuss his new book Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War's Most Extraordinary Spy.

In 1981, Tehran was still reeling from the Iranian Revolution. The Shah was gone, Ayatollah Khomeini's regime was consolidating power, and the Soviet Union was actively working to exploit the chaos. Into this dangerous environment stepped KGB Major Vladimir Kuzichkin—a highly skilled Soviet intelligence officer who would become one of the most important double agents of the late Cold War.

Codename: Redwood.

In this conversation, Ben Macintyre reveals the extraordinary true story of how Kuzichkin approached MI6, the critical intelligence he provided about Soviet plans in Iran, the personal crisis that drove him to switch sides, and the high-stakes operation that followed—one that reached the highest levels of Western governments and helped avert a potential nuclear crisis.

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In 1817, a mysterious young woman appeared in an English village speaking an unknown language and wearing exotic clothing.

She claimed to be Princess Caraboo, royalty from the distant island of Javasu who had been kidnapped by pirates and escaped by jumping overboard near England.

High society was captivated. Newspapers reported her story. Scholars examined her strange language. She performed unusual rituals and entertained fascinated aristocrats.

There was just one problem.

Princess Caraboo was actually Mary Baker, an English cobbler's daughter.

In this episode of History Shorts, we uncover one of Regency England's greatest hoaxes—and how an ordinary woman convinced some of Britain's wealthiest and most educated people that she was a foreign princess.

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Before the FBI or Secret Service became household names, there were the Pinkertons.

Founded by Scottish immigrant Allan Pinkerton in 1850, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency hunted train robbers, infiltrated criminal gangs, protected Abraham Lincoln, and developed an enormous network of private investigators.

Their famous logo—a watchful eye above the words "We Never Sleep"—helped give us the term "private eye."

But the Pinkertons had a darker role. Industrialists hired them to infiltrate unions, break strikes, and confront workers. At their height, the agency reportedly employed more operatives than the United States had soldiers.

In this episode of History Shorts, we trace the remarkable and controversial history of the Pinkerton Agency—from Civil War espionage and Wild West outlaws to violent labor disputes—and explore how a private detective organization became one of the most powerful forces in nineteenth-century America.

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On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles interrupted America's radios with terrifying news: Martians had invaded New Jersey.

Except they hadn't.

Welles's War of the Worlds was a radio drama presented partly as breaking-news bulletins. Some listeners who tuned in late mistook fiction for reality, and stories of nationwide panic quickly followed.

But did millions of Americans really flee their homes in terror?

Not quite. Later research suggests the legendary mass hysteria was greatly exaggerated—ironically, by newspapers eager to portray radio as dangerous competition.

In this episode of History Shorts, we separate the broadcast from the myth and uncover how a fictional invasion created a very real media legend.

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