Best Scott Allsop Podcasts (2025)

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20th September 1378: Western Schism divides the Catholic Church after the contested election of Antipope Clement VII

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Clement established his court in Avignon, supported by France, Scotland, and several other European states. Urban VI, meanwhile, retained control of Rome and was recognized by England, much of Germany, and parts of ...By Scott Allsop

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19th September 1970: First Glastonbury Festival took place at Worthy Farm in Somerset, known at the time as the Pilton Festival of Pop, Folk, and Blues

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Organised by dairy farmer Michael Eavis, the event was billed as the Pilton Pop, Blues & Folk Festival and attracted 1,500 people who paid a pound each to see a number of bands on a single stage and drink unlimited quantities of ...By Scott Allsop

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18th September 1932: Actress Peg Entwistle’s body found after jumping from the Hollywood sign

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The body of actress Peg Entwistle was found in a ravine below the Hollywoodland sign in Los ...By Scott Allsop

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17th September 1908: Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge of the U.S. Army becomes the first person to die in an airplane crash

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Whilst circling the parade ground of Fort Myer, a propeller blade split and broke apart. This struck one of the wires that controlled the rudder, pitching the aircraft forward sharply after which it crashed nose-first into the ...By Scott Allsop

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16th September 1955: Uprising that topples Juan Perón from power in Argentina begins

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The Revolución Libertadora began in Argentina, resulting in the end of Juan Perón’s second term as ...By Scott Allsop

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15th September 1935: Nazi Germany introduces the discriminatory ‘Nuremberg Laws’

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The Nuremberg Laws enshrined anti-semitic discrimination in the legal framework of the country through two pieces of ...By Scott Allsop

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14th September 1741: George Frideric Handel, a German-born composer who had settled in London, completed his oratorio Messiah

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Messiah has since become one of the most frequently performed choral works in Western music with the “Hallelujah” chorus becoming a central piece in the choral ...By Scott Allsop

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13th September 1985: Super Mario Bros. video game first released in Japan

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Originally only available for the Japanese Family Computer, it took nearly another two years for the game to be available ...By Scott Allsop

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12th September 1977: Steve Biko dies of injuries sustained in police custody

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South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko died in Pretoria prison from injuries inflicted while in police ...By Scott Allsop

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11th September 1792: Theft of the French Blue diamond, later known as the Hope Diamond, during the French Revolution

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The French Blue diamond had been part of the royal collection since the seventeenth century, and was stolen by a group of thieves after King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were imprisoned in the ...By Scott Allsop

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10th September 1991: Nirvana release ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’

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American rock band Nirvana released the critically acclaimed single “Smells Like Teen ...By Scott Allsop

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9th September 1947: First literal computer ‘bug’ found in the Harvard Mark II electromechanical computer

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The bug in the Harvard Mark II was very literal since it was a moth trapped between the points inside an electromagnetic ...By Scott Allsop

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8th September 1878: “The Great Herding” of sheep to Santa Cruz departs Fortín Conesa on the southern frontier of Argentina

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Contemporary accounts suggest that over 20,000 sheep were gathered near Fortín Conesa in northern Patagonia, from where they undertook a gruelling journey to the abundant grazing land of Santa Cruz ...By Scott Allsop

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7th September 1497: Perkin Warbeck claims he is English King Richard IV during the Second Cornish Uprising

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Warbeck had convinced his followers that he was Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the two ‘Princes in the ...By Scott Allsop

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6th September 1522: Victoria becomes the first ship to circumnavigate the world

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The ship Victoria returned to Spain as the only survivor of Ferdinand Magellan’s fleet that circumnavigated the ...By Scott Allsop

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5th September 1945: Defection of Igor Gouzenko to Canada exposes a Soviet espionage network in the West

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Gouzenko’s defection had far-reaching effects. In Canada, several people were arrested and convicted of espionage while other Western governments were alerted to the extent of Soviet intelligence ...By Scott Allsop

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4th September 1882: Thomas Edison opens the world’s first power plant on Pearl Street in New York

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Thomas Edison began operating the first permanent commercial electrical power plant in New ...By Scott Allsop

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3rd September 1939: Second World War officially begins when France and the United Kingdom declare war on Germany alongside Australia and New Zealand

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German Nazi forces had invaded Poland two days earlier, claiming to be acting in self-defence following a ‘false flag’ ...By Scott Allsop

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2nd September 1192: Treaty of Jaffa signed between Richard I of England and Saladin, ending the Third Crusade

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The Treaty of Jaffa established a three-year truce and confirmed that Jerusalem would remain under Muslim control, although Christian pilgrims would be allowed access to the city’s holy ...By Scott Allsop

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1st September 1939: Nazi Germany invades Poland, triggering the Second World War

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On the 1st September 1939, German forces invaded Poland in a move that was to trigger the Second World ...By Scott Allsop

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31st August 1854: Cholera outbreak in London’s Broad Street leads to John Snow’s investigation into germ-contaminated water

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Physician John Snow investigated the outbreak by mapping cholera cases in the area, which showed a clear concentration of cases around the public water pump on Broad ...By Scott Allsop

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30th August 1918: Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, survives an assassination attempt

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The assassination of Lenin was attempted by Fanya Kaplan, a member of the anti-Bolshevik faction of the Socialist Revolutionary ...By Scott Allsop

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29th August 1831: Michael Faraday performs his first experiment leading to the discovery of electromagnetic induction

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Faraday constructed an apparatus consisting of two coils of wire wound around opposite sides of an iron ring, and when he connected one coil to a battery a galvanometer detected a brief current induced in the second ...By Scott Allsop

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28th August 1963: Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.

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Taking place on the centenary of President Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation, in which he declared the freedom of slaves, ‘I Have a Dream’ was the sixteenth of eighteen speeches given by different orators that day and is regularly described as one of the best speeches of the 20th ...By Scott Allsop

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27th August 1928: The Kellogg-Briand Pact to renounce war signed by 15 nations including Germany, France and the United States

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At the time it was optimistically hoped that the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact would stop any future wars, but the impact of the Great Depression in the 1930s led nations such as Japan and Italy to launch invasions of Manchuria and Abyssinia ...By Scott Allsop

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26th August 1914: Battle of Tannenberg begins in the early weeks of the First World War between Russian and German forces

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Exploiting intercepted Russian radio messages, which had not been encrypted, the Germans were able to anticipate the Russians’ movements and concentrate their forces effectively. By 30 August, Russian resistance ...By Scott Allsop

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25th August 1835: The Great Moon Hoax begins to appear in The New York Sun newspaper as a series of articles

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The articles that formed the “Great Moon Hoax” stated that famed astronomer John Herschel had observed animals resembling bison, goats, and even humanoid bat-like creatures on the Moon alongside forests, oceans, pyramids, and ...By Scott Allsop

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24th August 79: The eruption of Mount Vesuvius wipes out numerous Roman settlements including Pompeii and Herculaneum

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Beginning at around 1pm on 24 August, Mount Vesuvius sent gas, volcanic ash, and pumice into the stratosphere for up to 20 hours. This was followed by a pyroclastic flow that carried gas and molten rock down from the volcano and which then buried the previously fallen ...By Scott Allsop

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23rd August 1942: Battle of Stalingrad enters its most intense phase with a bombing campaign by the German Luftwaffe

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While the broader Battle of Stalingrad began on 17 July, it wasn’t until 23 August that the city itself was attacked. Over 1,000 German aircraft dropped bombs in one of the Eastern Front’s most intense aerial ...By Scott Allsop

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22nd August 1485: King Richard III killed at the Battle of Bosworth as the forces of Henry Tudor bring the Plantagenet dynasty to an end

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The Stanley family surrounded and killed Richard III after the king chose to break ranks and target Henry Tudor ...By Scott Allsop

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21st August 1911: Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa stolen from the Louvre in Paris

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Vincenzo Peruggia served just six months in jail for the robbery, and was hailed by many Italians as a nationalist hero for returning the Mona Lisa to her real home although it was later returned to ...By Scott Allsop

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20th August 1975: NASA launches Viking 1, the first spacecraft to land on Mars and transmit images of the surface back to Earth

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Viking 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on 20 August 1975 and took nearly 11 months to reach ...By Scott Allsop

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19th August 1934: The first All-American Soap Box Derby held in Dayton, Ohio

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Held in Dayton, Ohio, on a track measuring 1,980 feet, the first All-American Soap Box Derby attracted 362 participants and more than 40,000 ...By Scott Allsop

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18th August 1612: The trials of nine Lancashire women and two men known as the Pendle Witches begin

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The trials of the Pendle Witches are not only some of the most famous but also some of the best recorded witch trials in British history, and represent two per cent of all British witches to face trial over three ...By Scott Allsop

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17th August 1945: Animal Farm by George Orwell published in the United Kingdom

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Subtitled “A Fairy Story,” the Animal Farm used a farmyard allegory to critique totalitarianism, particularly the rise and betrayal of the ideals of the Russian Revolution, which caused several publishers to initially reject the book, with concerns that it would harm wartime relations with the ...By Scott Allsop

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16th August 1819: An estimated 15 protestors are killed in the Peterloo Massacre at St Peter’s Field in Manchester

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The Peterloo Massacre took place at St Peter’s Field in Manchester, when a group of over 60,000 protesters were charged by ...By Scott Allsop

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15th August 1965: The Beatles perform at Shea Stadium in New York City, in front of a crowd of over 55,000 people

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The Beatles were first flown by helicopter to a nearby helipad and then driven to Shea Stadium in an armoured van where they performed a 30 minute set on a stage set up on the infield, far from the attendees in the ...By Scott Allsop

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14th August 1980: Lech Walesa leads a strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk and triggers the formation of the Solidarity trade union

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Within two years up to 80% of the entire Polish workforce had joined Solidarity or one of its sub-organisations, and they regularly used strikes to achieve political ...By Scott Allsop

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13th August 1521: Aztec Empire ends with the Fall of Tenochtitlan to Spanish forces led by Hernán Cortés

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The Aztec defence was led by the Emperor Cuauhtémoc but, despite determined resistance, the defenders were gradually overwhelmed and Cuauhtémoc was captured while trying to flee the ...By Scott Allsop

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12th August 1981: IBM announces the release of the 5150, the first IBM Personal Computer

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The IBM PC quickly became a commercial success and a standard in the emerging personal computer industry, establishing a broad market based on the IBM model that accelerated the spread of home ...By Scott Allsop

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11th August 1929: Babe Ruth becomes the first Major League Baseball player to hit 500 home runs

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The ball sailed over the right-field fence to land in Lexington Avenue that ran alongside Cleveland’s League ...By Scott Allsop

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10th August 1961: United States begins Operation Ranch Hand to destroy trees and crops during the Vietnam War

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Operation Ranch Hand was part of a strategy by the U.S. to counter the guerrilla tactics of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces by targeting agricultural areas and forest cover with chemicals such as Agent ...By Scott Allsop

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9th August 1974: Richard Nixon resigns as President of the United States of America while facing impeachment due to the Watergate Scandal

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Nixon announced his resignation in a televised speech on 8 August and it took effect from noon the next ...By Scott Allsop

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8th August 1786: Mont Blanc was successfully climbed for the first time by Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard

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Jacques Balmat, a local mountaineer and crystal hunter, and Dr Michel-Gabriel Paccard, a physician from Chamonix, set out on the evening of 7 August 1786 and made their way up Mont Blanc via what is now known as the Grands Mulets ...By Scott Allsop

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7th August 1964: The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed by the United States Congress

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The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution granted powers to President Johnson to use American military force to assist countries in Southeast Asia that were facing so-called ...By Scott Allsop

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6th August 1945: The United States drop an atomic bomb nicknamed ‘Little Boy’ on the Japanese city of Hiroshima from the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay

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The bomb exploded 1,900 feet above Hiroshima as planned, with the equivalent to 16 kilotons of TNT. Virtually all buildings within a mile of the blast were ...By Scott Allsop

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5th August 1914: The Battle of Liège begins, marking the first major engagement of the First World War

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The bombardment of the city's ring of forts by Germany's 'Big Bertha' howitzer caused extensive damage, and one by one, the forts were rendered inoperable. By 16 August, the forts had ...By Scott Allsop

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4th August 1789: The August Decrees result in the National Constituent Assembly of France voting to abolish the feudal system

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The decision to end the privileges enjoyed by the nobility and clergy came in the early stages of the French Revolution, during a special session of the National Constituent Assembly of France and resulted in the August ...By Scott Allsop

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3rd August 1492: Christopher Columbus sets sail from the Spanish port of Palos de la Frontera on the voyage that takes him to the Americas

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Palos de la Frontera holds the official title as the starting point of Columbus’ transatlantic ...By Scott Allsop

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2nd August 1940: No. 303 Squadron, one of two Polish RAF squadrons in the Battle of Britain, formed at RAF Northolt

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No. 303 Squadron, which was composed primarily of Polish airmen who had escaped to Britain after the defeat of Poland, claimed the largest number of aircraft shot down of any RAF squadron during the Battle of ...By Scott Allsop