It’s History

It’s History

By Ryan SocashHistory
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It’s History episodes

  • I found Buffalo's two statues of liberty
    High above downtown Buffalo, two 36-foot replicas of the Statue of Liberty have watched over the city since 1925. They were installed on the Liberty Bank Building, a 23-story Neoclassical skyscraper originally built for the German‑American Bank. During World War I, rising anti‑German sentiment prompted the bank to rebrand as Liberty Bank.
    This video examines the building’s heavily secured bank vault, a remarkable high‑wire performance between the two rooftop statues, the rise of Buffalo’s German‑American community, the bank’s rebranding, the construction of the Liberty Building, the mystery of a possible third Statue of Liberty, and other events that made the structure one of Buffalo’s most recognizable landmarks.
    #Buffalo #Architecture #History

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    18 min
  • Inside the Runit dome ☢️
    Runit Island, a small Pacific islet, is sealed beneath a concrete dome that hides a troubling legacy of the nuclear age. Between 1946 and 1958 the United States conducted dozens of nuclear tests across the Marshall Islands, leaving Enewetak Atoll heavily contaminated. Decades later, radioactive soil, debris, and contaminated equipment were collected and buried in a crater on Runit Island and covered by the Runit Dome—hundreds of concrete panels sealing material never intended to be permanent. This video examines what happened to the radioactive waste across Enewetak, why Runit was chosen as the dumping site, and the implications of relying on a temporary concrete structure to contain contamination for generations, tracing the story from Cold War testing to later cleanup efforts.
    #RunitDome #Enewetak #MarshallIslands #nuclearhistory #radiation #ColdWar

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    12 min
  • I explored a subway cathedral 🚇
    Beneath City Hall Park lies one of New York City’s greatest architectural contradictions: City Hall Station — a subway stop designed like a cathedral, sealed off from the public for nearly 80 years after being abandoned in 1945. Built as the ceremonial gateway to the world’s first modern subway system, the station features vaulted Guastavino-tile ceilings, skylights, chandeliers, and handcrafted oak furnishings. This episode explains how political symbolism, engineering compromises, construction beneath sensitive government buildings, exploding ridership, and a tight curve that made modern trains unsafe turned a masterpiece into a liability — and why the station remains locked away beneath City Hall today. #NewYorkHistory #AbandonedPlaces #SubwayHistory

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    16 min
  • You can still visit a Blockbuster 🎬
    Before streaming changed everything, Blockbuster Video ruled the American weekend. With bright aisles and endless rows of tapes, Blockbuster turned movie renting into a national ritual and displaced thousands of local video shops. By the 1990s it had over 9,000 stores worldwide and rented 100 million tapes a week.
    This episode traces Blockbuster’s rise, domination, and downfall; explores abandoned stores across the United States; and explains why one remaining Blockbuster in Oregon survives as a living museum of 1999.
    Original research & script: Bryce Walsh. Adapted & narrated by Ryan Socash. Editor: Karolina Szwata. Host: Ryan Socash.
    #Blockbuster #ItsHistory #AbandonedPlaces

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    12 min
  • I discovered Niagara's lost factories ⚡
    Niagara Falls wasn’t always a postcard-perfect tourist spot. In the early 1900s it became an industrial powerhouse driven by the falls and the world’s first large-scale hydroelectric plants. This episode explores the rise and fall of Niagara Falls’ mills district: how Tesla and Westinghouse turned the area into an electrical center, why industries like aluminum and chemicals clustered on its shores, and how environmental disasters such as Love Canal left lasting scars. Today’s Niagara is a shadow of its industrial past, but ruins, tunnels, and power stations still tell that story.
    #NiagaraFalls #IndustrialHistory #ItsHistory

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    22 min

About It’s History

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IT’S HISTORY is a ride through history – join us in discovering the world’s most important eras, the minds that changed everything, and the most important inventions of our time through weekly tales of Urban Decay.