HISTORY This Week

By The HISTORY® Channel

Society & Culture Education History

What's HISTORY This Week about?

This week, something momentous happened. Whether or not it made the textbooks, it most certainly made history. Join HISTORY This Week as we turn back the clock to meet the people, visit the places and witness the moments that led us to where we are today.
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Fire in the Triangle Shirtw...

03.20.2023

March 25, 1911. It’s quarter to five on a Saturday—closing time at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Someone on the cutting room floor lights a cigarette… that ignites a pile of scraps. Over the next fifteen minutes, hundreds of workers scramble ...

HISTORY This Week episodes:

03.20.2023 Fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory March 25, 1911. It’s quarter to five on a Saturday—closing time at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Someone on the cutting room floor lights a cigarette… that ignites a pile of scraps. Over the next fifteen minutes, hundreds of workers scramble ...
03.13.2023 The Tragic Life of London’s Favorite Clown March 17, 1828. The celebrated clown, Joseph Grimaldi, rises from his sickbed. Once London’s most energetic performer, he’s gradually been crippled by decades of pratfalls and acrobatics. He can barely manage the short walk to Sadler’s Wells theater, where he’s ...
03.06.2023 Axis Sally’s Nazi Radio March 10, 1949. Defendant Mildred Gillars arrives at a courthouse to hear her verdict. To trial-watchers, she’s known as Axis Sally—the American woman who broadcast Nazi propaganda from Berlin during World War II. In taunting tones, she spent years pushing ...
03.03.2023 Introducing: American Football (Episode 1: Canton, Ohio) A new History Channel podcast, American Football is the untold tale of the rough-and-tumble origins of the National Football League. Produced and presented by Michael Strahan and narrated by actress and pro football enthusiast Kate Mara, this podcast reaches back ...
02.27.2023 The Flight of the Concorde March 2, 1969. French pilot André Turcat takes to the skies above Toulouse-Blagnac airport. He’s flying an odd-looking plane: long and slender with triangular wings and a bent-down nose like a bird of prey. It’s called the Concorde – a ...
02.20.2023 The Cold War Gets A Wall February 22, 1962. The city of Berlin is cut in half by a concrete and barbed wire wall. On the west side, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy is giving a rousing speech when suddenly, what look like balloons explode above ...
02.13.2023 The Apollo Theater is Reborn February 14, 1934. When Adelaide Hall steps onstage at The Apollo Theater, she’s greeted by an audience unlike those she’s experienced before. Hall is already famous—she’s been on Broadway and performed at Harlem’s Cotton Club. But those theaters are segregated. ...
02.06.2023 Anatomy of a Campus Heist February 11, 2005. FBI agents bust down the door of a cinder block house near the University of Kentucky campus. Amid flash grenades and screaming teens, they arrest three students – plus a fourth student in a nearby dorm. The ...
01.30.2023 Britain Axes the Monarchy January 30, 1649 / 1661. London, 1649. King Charles I lays his head on a chopping block. The axe falls and, soon with it, the monarchy. What follows is Parliament’s grueling effort to set up a functioning republic – one ...
01.23.2023 The Dogs Who Saved Nome, Alaska January 27, 1925. Musher “Wild Bill” Shannon and his team of sled dogs race off into the frigid Alaskan night. He’s carrying a package of life-saving serum, wrapped in fur to keep it from freezing. There’s no time to waste: ...
01.16.2023 From Cautionary Tales: Martin Luther King Jr, the Jewelry Genius, and the Art of Public Speaking Here’s a special episode of Cautionary Tales, a podcast from our friends at Pushkin Industries. On Cautionary Tales, bestselling author Tim Harford shares stories of human error, natural disasters, and tragic catastrophes from history that contain important lessons for today. ...
01.09.2023 Tuskegee Top Gun January 11, 2022. Lt. Col. James Harvey arrives at Nellis Air Force base in Nevada for the first time in 73 years. He’s there to accept a plaque celebrating the last time he was there—for the Air Force’s first ever ...
01.02.2023 Uncovering Tutankhamun 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 discovery of the tomb of the pharaoh ...
12.26.2022 End of Year Pitch-A-Thon December 26, 2022. For the first time, a behind-the-scenes look at a key part of the History This Week episode-making process. Today, we’re inviting our listeners to pull up a chair and join one of our pitch sessions. Usually, an ...
12.19.2022 The Surprising History of Christmas Gifts Christmas Eve, 1913. For months, newspapers have been trumpeting an urgent message: Do your Christmas shopping early. It would be easy to assume this was the work of greedy department stores and slick ad companies. But it wasn’t – at ...
12.12.2022 Samuel Adams Brews Rebellion 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 men don disguises and make their way ...
12.05.2022 Irving Berlin’s Musical Revolution December 8, 1914. Crowds pour into the New Amsterdam Theater to see the opening night of a new show, “Watch Your Step.” It’s the first full-length revue written by the popular young songwriter, Irving Berlin. His songs show off Berlin’s ...
11.28.2022 A Meteorite Hits Ann Hodges 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 standup radio, ricochets around the living room, and collides with the thigh of ...
11.21.2022 The Ballad of Blackbeard November 22, 1718. Early morning, off the North Carolina coast. The pirate Blackbeard, peering over the rail of his ship, is startled to discover that a pair of British naval ships are after him. He rouses his hungover crew and ...
11.14.2022 The Inca's Last Stand (Replay) November 16, 1532. Atahualpa, the king of the Inca Empire, marches towards the city of Cajamarca in modern-day Peru, surrounded by 80,000 soldiers. Once he arrives, Atahualpa expects the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro to surrender in the town square. But ...
11.07.2022 Two Shawnee Brothers Hold Their Ground November 7, 1811. William Henry Harrison and his troops are camped near the Wabash river. They’ve been told to keep the peace—but Harrison wants land, and he’s come here to try and take it. Less than a mile away is ...
10.31.2022 The Truth About Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings November 5, 1998. Using DNA evidence, the scientific journal Nature publishes findings that put to rest a centuries-old mystery: Was Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman at Monticello, the mother of six of Thomas Jefferson’s children? Until then, the historical consensus ...
10.24.2022 The Donora Death Fog October 26, 1948. A mysterious fog descends upon the valley town of Donora, Pennsylvania. Most of its residents work at the local steel mill and are used to murky air. But there’s something different about this miasma of acrid vapors. ...
10.20.2022 Introducing: It Was Said Season 2 It Was Said, the 2021 Webby Award winner for Best Podcast Series, returns with a new season to look back on some of the most powerful, impactful, and timeless speeches in history. Written and narrated by Pulitzer Prize winner and ...
10.17.2022 Exploring Earth’s Evil Twin October 22, 1975. After traveling millions of miles through space, a Soviet spacecraft plunges through thick clouds of sulfuric acid to land on Venus. Its goal: take a photograph of another planet’s surface and send it back home—history’s first up-close ...
10.10.2022 Jim Thorpe's Lost Gold (w/ Sports History This Week) October 13, 1982. The announcement came from Switzerland, across the world from where Jim Thorpe was raised on Indian territory in Oklahoma. In his time, Thorpe was the most popular athlete in the world, winning two gold medals at the ...
10.03.2022 The Bone Wars 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 a parade. But no. In 1915, nobody really cares about dinosaurs. ...
09.26.2022 The Hanging of Jekyll and Hyde October 1, 1788. William Brodie mounts the gallows outside Edinburgh’s jail. Just a few years before, as a respected member of the town council, he’d helped redesign those gallows. Now he stands upon them as a convicted criminal sentenced to ...
09.19.2022 Saladin Takes Back the Holy City September 20, 1187. It’s daytime outside the walls of Jerusalem. Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt, ponders his next attack. His troops encircle and lay siege to the city. They vastly outnumber the Crusader knights inside, and Saladin’s on the cusp ...
09.12.2022 The Radium Girls Fight Back September 2, 1922. Twenty-four-year-old Mollie Maggia has a toothache. In less than a year, this otherwise healthy young woman will be dead. Others like her will soon follow. They’d all shared what seemed to be a dream job: applying glow-in-the-dark ...
09.05.2022 Star Trek Premieres September 8, 1966. For the first time, the USS Enterprise appears on screen. It is the premiere of a strange new futuristic TV show. Star Trek will introduce the world to a cast of characters that push the boundaries of ...
08.29.2022 Love, Betrayal, and the Battle for Rome September 2, 31 BCE. Two camps prepare for battle off the coast of Greece. On one side is Octavian, Julius Caesar’s heir apparent. On the other, Marc Antony and his lover, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. This battle won’t just determine ...
08.22.2022 The Deadly Puzzle of Yellow Fever August 27, 1900. Dr. Jesse Lazear, a U.S. Army surgeon, walks into Las Animas Hospital Yellow Fever ward in Havana Cuba, toting a brood of mosquitos. He has the system down: remove the cotton stopper that keeps the mosquito penned ...
08.15.2022 Dirty Dancing in the Borscht Belt August 17, 1987. On the red carpet in New York City, it’s the premier of a new movie: Dirty Dancing. The story is set in the sunburnt Shangri-La of New York’s Catskills resort region. The movie will introduce millions to ...
08.08.2022 Pop Music Pirates (Replay) August 14, 1967 – Off the coast of England, a group of pirate ships has been fighting to stay afloat. These are pirates of a particular kind—less sword fighting and treasure hunting, more spinning records and dancing late into the ...
08.01.2022 The Web Goes World Wide August 6, 1991. On an Internet news board, a memo appears, describing a new project that some scientists have been developing: “The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project.” It’s meant to help ordinary people use the Internet—which at the time is only being ...
07.25.2022 Convert or Leave (Replay) 7/31/1492. In cities, towns and villages across late medieval Spain, whole districts have emptied out. Houses abandoned, stores closed, and synagogues—which until recently had been alive with singing and prayer—now sit quiet. Exactly four months earlier, the King and Queen ...
07.18.2022 Walt Whitman's First Fan Mail July 21, 1855. Literary lion Ralph Waldo Emerson writes a letter to an unknown Brooklyn journalist named Walt Whitman. He’s just read Whitman’s first published poems, which have both startled him and caused him to rejoice. Emerson congratulates the poet ...
07.11.2022 The Games to Win Ancient Rome July 13, 44 BCE. Julius Caesar is dead, stabbed by a trusted friend. With Rome shaken, the Senate meets to decide next steps. They're confronting the brutal power struggle already breaking out among three men: Brutus, the deadly friend; Marc ...
07.04.2022 The Colosseum Becomes a Wonder July 7, 2007. In a dramatic ceremony featuring pop stars, fireworks, and smoke canons, the Colosseum is named one of the seven new wonders of the world. It’s an appropriately over-the-top blowout for an arena which, centuries before, was home ...
06.27.2022 Mutiny on the Black Sea June 27, 1905. It’s the last morning of Ippolit Gilyarovsky’s life. He wakes up in a battleship on the Black Sea. The Potemkin. He’s a despised Russian naval officer who doesn’t care that his sailors are refusing to eat their ...
06.22.2022 Introducing: Sports History This Week June 23, 1972. President Richard Nixon’s men broke into the Watergate complex just six days earlier. He’s attempting some damage control, but in between meetings with his staff, Nixon signs a new bill into law – the Educational Amendments of ...
06.20.2022 The Church Kidnaps Edgardo Mortara June 23, 1858. A knock at the door—it’s the papal police. For the Mortaras, a Jewish family living in Bologna, this is not a good sign. And soon, the officers break the agonizing news: “You have been betrayed.” The Mortaras’ ...
06.13.2022 Watergate from the Inside (Replay) June 17, 1972. In the early morning hours, five men are caught after breaking into the Watergate building in Washington, DC. The failed break-in that night will eventually lead to the unraveling of a major American scandal that reaches the ...
06.06.2022 Bayard Rustin Marches Free June 11, 1946. Bayard Rustin walks out of the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary after serving a sentence for conscientiously objecting to WWII. A pacifist organizer, his efforts reach the ears of Mahatma Gandhi, who invites him to India. And Rustin never ...
05.30.2022 Anna May Wong Steps into the Spotlight June 4, 1939. Anna May Wong steps off an ocean liner to greet her fans in Australia. In many ways, she is a classic Hollywood actor. Glamorous and famous. She’s made some sixty movies that have been seen around the ...
05.23.2022 Reconstruction IV: Voting Rights At Last May 26, 1965. One hundred years after the Civil War, Congress is debating a bill whose goal is to enforce the 15th amendment, which, in 1870, promised the right to vote regardless of race. But that’s not what happened. Now ...
05.19.2022 Reconstruction III: Eric Foner and Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction In 1935, famed Black sociologist and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois published Black Reconstruction, a revolutionary reassessment of the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War. The book was also a critique of the flawed way others had been telling the ...
05.16.2022 Reconstruction II: The First Presidential Impeachment May 16, 1868. The Capitol is filled with spectators, anxiously trying to predict how each Senator will vote. It’s the first presidential impeachment trial in American history, and its outcome will have profound effects on Reconstruction, the great project of ...
05.09.2022 Reconstruction I: Secession on Trial May 10, 1865. Jefferson Davis is awakened by gunshots. The president of the defeated and disbanded Confederate States of America is on the run, and today, federal troops finally catch him. His arrest puts the face of the Confederacy behind ...

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