On January 5, 2026, Jirdes Winther Baxter passed away at 101 years old — the last known survivor of the 1925 diphtheria epidemic in Nome, Alaska. A few years ago, we told the story of the Serum Run: the desperate relay of mushers and sled dogs who carried a life-saving antitoxin across Alaska, including to an 11-month-old Baxter. Today, that run lives on through the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Enjoy this classic HTW story, and stay tuned for new episodes soon! January 27, 1925. Musher “Wild Bi...
Jan 26, 2026•37 min
How did the VW Beetle go from Hitler’s dream car to beloved hippie icon? Today, we’re sharing an episode from a new podcast, Business History. Hosts Jacob Goldstein and Robert Smith bring to life the greatest innovations, the boldest entrepreneurs and the craziest mavericks in the annals of business—and share the lessons we can learn from their successes and failures. In today’s episode: How Hitler launched the Volkswagen Beetle and its journey from Nazi vehicle to bohemian Love Bug. This is par...
Jan 22, 2026•38 min
January 25, 1908. Harry Houdini is the most famous magician in America. He’s known for his escapes – from handcuffs, boxes, jail cells, even a giant football. But the escape act is getting old, and ticket sales aren’t what they used to be. And on this day, an under-capacity audience at the Columbia Theater in St. Louis is about to witness Houdini’s most dangerous escape yet… from death itself. How did a Hungarian immigrant named Erik Weisz become Harry Houdini? And when his career was fading, ho...
Jan 19, 2026•29 min
January 15, 1919. Boston PD receives a call: “Send all available rescue personnel...there's a wave of molasses coming down Commercial Street." The bizarre flood decimated Boston's North End. How did it happen? And why does it still affect us all today? Special thanks to our guest, Stephen Puleo, author of Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 . ** This episode originally aired Jan 13, 2020. Get in touch: historythisweekpodcast@history.com Follow on Instagram: @historythisweek Follow...
Jan 12, 2026•20 min
Editor’s note: This episode originally aired January 9, 2023. Lt. Col. Harry Stewart Jr. passed away in February 2025 at the age of 100. Lt. Col. James Harvey III still resides in New Jersey, now 102 years old. -- 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 weapons competition. Back then, Harvey and the other Tuskegee Airmen o...
Jan 05, 2026•31 min
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 Tutankhamun revealed antiquities so dazzling that a media frenzy ensued – newspapers, newsreels, and Hollywood movies vied to show audiences these wonders of ancient Egypt. Now, lead archaeologist Howard Carter pushes open the door to find a majestic stone sarcopha...
Dec 29, 2025•39 min
The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree has brought joy and sparkle to Midtown Manhattan since the early 1930s. The annual festivities may seem steady and timeless but this holiday icon actually has a surprisingly dramatic history. Millions tune in each year to watch the tree lighting in a music-filled ceremony on NBC, and tens of thousands more will crowd around the tree’s massive branches during the holiday season, adjusting their phones for that perfect holiday selfie. But the Rockefeller Cente...
Dec 24, 2025•45 min
December 27, 1853. On a freezing, snowy night in Birmingham, England, 2,000 people have lined up outside the town hall. They’ve braved the temperatures for a landmark performance, Charles Dickens’ first reading of A Christmas Carol. The tale will become an international sensation and beloved Christmas tradition. In this special episode of HISTORY This Week, we bring you a classic 1949 rendition of the story starring Vincent Price, so you can decide for yourself: What is it about A Christmas Caro...
Dec 22, 2025•27 min
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 toward three ships moored in the harbor – each weighted down with chests of valuable British East India tea. The men climb aboard, tear open the chests and dump the tea in the water. Cheers fill the winter night. Back at the meeting, Samuel Adams waits. There’s nothi...
Dec 15, 2025•37 min
December 18, 1970. Decades after the end of WWII, a Nazi doctor is on trial. Today is judgment day in a long, difficult legal battle, but this case isn’t about war crimes. The German pharmaceutical company Grunenthal is charged with the worst medical disaster in history: the Thalidomide scandal. The shoddily tested and hastily approved drug made its way into medicine cabinets around the world, and a decade after its release, the reality is becoming clear: Thalidomide is killing babies. Who are t...
Dec 08, 2025•26 min
December 1, 1564. Spanish vessels left a secret port in Mexico about two weeks ago. Their goal: to sail across the Pacific and back, charting a new route for international trade, and giving Spain an edge against its chief colonial rival, Portugal. But today, when a storm hits, the smallest ship is separated from the rest of the fleet. Now, that ship, the San Lucas, is on its own. The following year, when the San Lucas makes it back to Mexico, against all odds, its pilot—a Black mariner—is accuse...
Dec 01, 2025•35 min
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 stand-up radio, ricochets around the living room, and collides with the thigh of Mrs. Ann Hodges, who’s been napping on the couch. Newspapers declare: “experts agreed unanimously that Mrs. Hodges was the first person known to have been struck by a meteorite.” What happened to this space rock after it crashed to Earth and thrust itself into volatile...
Nov 24, 2025•37 min
November 16, 1776. George Washington rows toward Manhattan to inspect the fort that bears his name, only to meet a full-scale British assault already underway. By afternoon, Fort Washington has fallen, and General Washington is forced to abandon New York City. The Continental Army is sick, outnumbered, and demoralized. For a moment, the Revolution seems lost. Facing his worst defeat of the war, Washington himself is questioning their odds. In their new PBS documentary, The American Revolution , ...
Nov 17, 2025•39 min•Season 6Ep. 25
November 16, 1961. Fourteen college students from Iowa have driven nearly a thousand miles to the White House. They’re fasting, protesting, and calling for an end to nuclear bomb testing. These students, later known as the Grinnell 14, will help ignite the student peace movement of the 1960s. Actor Peter Coyote (then Peter Cohon) was one of them. He joins us to remember how it felt to grow up under the shadow of the bomb, why they believed Kennedy’s “peace race” could change the world, and what ...
Nov 10, 2025•28 min•Season 6Ep. 24
November 3, 1880. Congressman James Garfield wakes up on his quiet farm in Ohio to learn that he’s been elected President of the United States. He never campaigned to be on the ticket. He never wanted the presidency. But the nation, weary of corruption and hungry for reform, has chosen him to lead. But four months after taking office, Garfield will be shot by a man who believes he’s owed a government position. And the president’s short, remarkable life will end in tragedy. This week, we’re talki...
Nov 03, 2025•36 min•Season 6Ep. 23
October 28, 1895. It’s the first day of a murder trial in Philadelphia, and H.H. Holmes has been left to represent himself. His lawyers say they haven’t had time to prepare for his case, although they may just want to avoid defending the man some newspapers are already saying is “sure to grace a gallows.” Holmes has been accused of murdering his business associate, but rumors swirl that he may have killed dozens, even hundreds more. A century later, some still call him "America's first serial ki...
Oct 27, 2025•34 min
October 19, 1814. An eager audience files into the Holliday Street Theater in Baltimore, about to see a debut performance, described as a “much-admired new song.” The composer of this song, Francis Scott Key, had written the lyrics during a recent battle in Baltimore, trapped on a British ship as he watched the rockets red glare from afar. Key wasn’t a professional songwriter – a prominent lawyer in Washington D.C., he specialized in cases related to slavery, both defending enslaved people and s...
Oct 23, 2025•31 min
October 24, 1945. The Charter of the United Nations is signed, promising to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Back when the charter was drafted a few months earlier in San Francisco, delegates from around the world gathered to build a new era of peace and human rights. Among them is Mary McLeod Bethune, the only Black woman in the U.S. delegation, and she already sees the contradictions beneath the moment: colonial powers writing freedom into a document that excludes million...
Oct 20, 2025•33 min•Season 6Ep. 22
October, 1955. In living rooms across Denmark, children tear open the box of a brand-new toy: the LEGO System in Play. Inside are plastic bricks, a printed playmat of roads, little houses and trees — everything in perfect scale. As they build, something new is taking shape. It looks simple, but it’s a radical idea — every piece connects, no matter when or where it’s made. It’s more than a toy — it’s a system. That quiet innovation will turn a small family workshop into one of the most successful...
Oct 13, 2025•31 min•Season 6Ep. 21
October 11, 1955. Nearly three hundred of the Soviet Union’s top scientists sign a secret letter demanding the removal of one man: Trofim Lysenko. For decades, Lysenko had Joseph Stalin’s ear, ruling Soviet biology with an iron fist—banning genetics, rewriting textbooks, and sending dissenting scientists to prison or worse. How did a peasant-turned-agronomist convince Stalin that wheat could turn into rye, and that ideology mattered more than evidence? And when politics replace science, what—and...
Oct 06, 2025•41 min•Season 6Ep. 20
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. But that is all about to change. And when it does, it is largely because of two paleontologists. Two guys who started off as best friends … until their growing obsession with unearthing and cataloging dinosaur bones would turn them into r...
Sep 29, 2025•35 min
September 27, 1986. You’re a kid in the mid-80s. You get home from school, flip on the TV, and see something strange: a commercial where a giant egg hatches behind a family’s console, revealing a toy robot. His name is R.O.B. — the Robotic Operating Buddy — but he's just an accessory. The real product: Nintendo. Today, the Nintendo Entertainment System is launching nationwide. Just a few years earlier, the U.S. video game market had collapsed under the weight of bad games and too many consoles. ...
Sep 22, 2025•30 min•Season 6Ep. 19
September 14, 1901. Midnight in the Adirondacks. A pounding knock at the door jolts Theodore and Edith Roosevelt awake. William McKinley is dead. Hours later, Theodore will be sworn in as the youngest president in U.S. history. But Edith barely flinches—her diary that day notes her children’s sniffles before her husband’s rise to power. Who was this woman who grew up alongside Theodore, helped shape his presidency, reinvented the role of First Lady, and yet tried to erase her own story from the ...
Sep 15, 2025•41 min•Season 6Ep. 18
With every episode, Lena Dunham and Alissa Bennett take you on a historical deep dive into the life of a woman society dismissed by calling her mad, sad, or just plain bad: Lindsay Lohan, Judy Garland, Winona Ryder, Mariah Carey, Lil Kim and many more. Join them for a rich, hilarious, and heartbreaking look into exactly what it means when we call a woman “crazy.” The C-Word was originally published behind a paywall from 2019 - 2022. This is the first time it’s being released to all major podcast...
Sep 11, 2025•3 min
September 10, 1986. It’s just before 8am when Cliff Stoll’s pager jolts him awake. A computer at Lawrence Berkeley Lab has flagged a problem: a tiny 75-cent accounting error. But when Stoll rushes to his office, he realizes this isn’t about missing spare change. Someone has slipped into the lab’s network, tunneling thousands of miles away into U.S. military computers. Cliff isn’t a spycatcher. He’s an astronomer. And yet, from this moment on, he’ll spend months chasing a hacker who may be workin...
Sep 08, 2025•31 min•Season 6Ep. 17
Sept 5, 1698. Tsar Peter the Great of Russia returns home from a year-long European tour. When noblemen, religious figures, and friends gather to welcome him home, Peter pulls out a straight razor, holds it to their throats, and…forcibly shaves their beards. This event will go down in history as a first step toward Russian geopolitical power. Before Peter’s reign, Russia was an isolated nation that was largely ignored by the rest of the world. How did Peter the Great almost single-handedly drag ...
Sep 01, 2025•29 min
August 28, 1920. In the town of Tequila, fireworks burst overhead as people celebrate Mexico’s independence. Then… gunshots. Malachías Cuervo, heir to the famous tequila dynasty, has just reignited a bitter feud with his family’s rivals, the Sauzas. For decades, his brother José Cuervo fought to rebuild the family business through drought, revolution, and political upheaval—turning a struggling operation into an empire. His tactfulness allowed Cuervo to survive as one of the most popular tequila...
Aug 25, 2025•37 min•Season 6Ep. 16
August 24, 1914. A train pulls up to the lumber town of White River, Ontario, carrying a regiment of Canadian troops on board. On the tracks where they disembark is a small black bear cub. An army veterinarian decides to buy the bear and name her Winnipeg—Winnie for short—after the town where he's been living. When the soldiers are deployed to the European front, Winnie is left at the London Zoo, where a child named Christopher Robin Milne will meet her. He'll later rename his own teddy bear aft...
Aug 21, 2025•30 min
August 24, 394. On the walls of a fading Egyptian temple, a priest carves what will become the last known hieroglyph in history. At the same moment, in Alexandria, a fiery archbishop named Theophilus is rising to power. He mocks the ancient Egyptian gods, desecrates their temples, and sets out to stamp out “paganism” for good. But Theophilus is fighting more than ancient religion—he clashes with monks, rivals, even fellow bishops, in a ruthless bid to make Alexandria the beating heart of the Chr...
Aug 18, 2025•33 min•Season 6Ep. 15
August 15, 1915. American diplomat J. T. Du Bois publishes a letter in The New York Times. It’s not about diplomacy or foreign affairs. This letter is about sharks. It’s Du Bois’ attempt to prove to the American public that “Man-Eating Sharks” - as he calls them - are real. Because in 1916? Most people think they’re a myth. Experts say that sharks aren’t dangerous. That they’re “rabbit” tame and too weak-jawed to pose any real threat to humans—at least, in the North East. But the following summe...
Aug 11, 2025•33 min•Season 6Ep. 14
