Retropod

On March 25, 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were a few days into their marriage when they invited the press to join them at their honeymoon suite at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel.

Jazz singer Ethel Ennis’s voice wowed audiences and won praise from critics. But when she was faced with the opportunity to become a superstar, Ennis chose a different path.

The nurse who founded the American Red Cross had no formal training in medicine. She tended to countless wounded soldiers.

In the 1950s, a child trying to call Santa Claus accidentally called NORAD and changed Christmas Eve forever.

Toys R Us founder Charles Lazarus had no idea how big the toy industry would become.

After the Civil War, formerly enslaved people placed notices in black-owned newspapers across the country to find their loved ones.

A few days before his team took the field as huge underdogs in Super Bowl III, New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath made what was seen as an insane prediction at the time: "The Jets will win Sunday," he said. "I guarantee it."

In the 1950s, Charles Van Doren, a quiet professor in New York City, became wrapped up in one of the biggest television quiz show scandals in history.

While on a research trip to the Arctic in the early 20th century, scientist Clarence Birdseye — a name you might recognize from the frozen food aisle — made an observation that would go on to change the way we eat.

Disasters don’t just happen. Like anything in life, there’s usually a buildup. In the case of the Chernobyl disaster, the series of failures stretched back more than a decade. But what happened the day before the explosion?

Serving as special counsel is probably only the third hardest job Robert Mueller has held. His life in public service started when he just 23 years old, as a Marine lieutenant in the Vietnam War.

Growing up in Somalia, a country where stories are handed down through generations, one of the first tales that children are told is about an ancient queen who fought to give women power by castrating men.

During World War I, British nurse Flora Sandes put down her nurses bag to fight with the Serbian Army.

He thought being drafted into the National Football League was so unlikely that he signed with an African American league team. Then, the NFL called.

It doesn't seem like a big deal today, but 1930s America lived in fear of the male nipple.

Nine months before the Iran hostage crisis, Kenneth Kraus was held hostage in Iran for eight days.

Once upon a time, people walked between the U.S. and Canada over a frozen Niagara Falls. But one day, that all changed forever.

In 1983, Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Union’s Air Defense Forces, trusted his gut and averted a global nuclear catastrophe.

It is one of the worst expressions of racism in American history. And there’s no federal law to prevent it.

A German woman discovered that her childhood home was stolen from a Jewish family who fled Nazi Germany. Last year, she tracked down the address of one of the children, and wrote him a letter.

In the 1950s, Dr. Virginia Apgar created a quick test that nurses have since performed on millions of babies just after birth. She is considered one of the most important figures in modern medicine — a world that almost pushed her away.

Beginning in the earliest days of baseball, fans, journalists and even physicists disputed whether or not pitchers could make a ball curve.

Benjamin Franklin, the most colorful of America's Founding Fathers, had a misunderstood, electrical and ultimately homicidal relationship with turkeys.

Weeks before Thanksgiving, 1959, cranberries were declared unsafe to eat. The race was on to save America’s favorite holiday side dish.

No women served on the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991. The ugly Anita Hill hearings changed that.

For many, memories of that devastating day quickly revert to that silent, flickering sequence captured by Abraham Zapruder. It is as chilling as it is familiar: the approaching convertible, the waves of a crowd about to lose its innocence.

During World War II, around 80 Russian women took to the skies and risked their lives to fight against the Germans.

The history of subpoenas, and the fiery congressional hearings that have captivated Americans for centuries began with a Founding Father raising his hand to say, “Investigate me!”

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy devastated the nation. But the day before the shooting was just a normal day. It was particularly calm and uneventful for the gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald.

Once a party drug, ketamine has found its way into modern medicine.

Four years before Amelia Earhart ever got into a plane, Ruth Law was already making a name for herself in the skies.

Sexual harassment has been existed in showbiz as long as there have been bright lights.

Back in the 1830s, Jim Crow wasn't yet a symbol of inequality. He was a fictional character in minstrel shows who, to entertain his audiences, performed in blackface.

After receiving complaints about carriages driving too fast, Washington D.C. policeman William H. West arrested a presidential speed demon.

For decades, the boundary between Mexico and the United States was little more than an imaginary line in the sand.

If you work in an office without offices, with just about everyone working in a large spare space full of stylish desks, straight lines and papers stored in a credenza, then you have met Florence Knoll Bassett.

A full year after the King James Bible was printed in 1631, people discovered an error.

After the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, John Surratt traveled across three continents, wore disguises and used fake names for nearly two years to escape authorities.

Pinball was once so vilified that it was banned in cities across the United States.

When Eugene Cernan walked on the moon, he didn’t know he’d be the last astronaut to make the journey.

In the early days of the House, some congresspeople thought hats had no place atop the heads of representatives debating the great issues of the day. Hats, they argued, weren’t dignified.

When Alexander Hamilton argued in favor of lifetime tenures for Supreme Court justices, he probably didn’t foresee them living past their prime.

Lego started as a company that made wooden toys, and grew into an empire of plastic building blocks.

John Calhoun’s rodent experiments revolutionized the way we think about social behavior and the impact of growing populations.

Presidents throughout history have visited battlefields to better grasp conditions, reverse public doubt and signal that the country took war efforts seriously.

White House maid Elizabeth Jaffray not only cleaned up after presidents, she had an amazing insight into their appetites.

Fritz Kuhn was the leader of the pro-Nazi group known as the German American Bund. He was a hero to his audience, and a scourge on the world to most others.

After being fired from his job for being gay, Frank Kameny took his battle for equality to the nation’s highest court.

A professor at The University of Virginia was fatally shot by a student in 1840.

The story of how the anonymous soldier came to rest inside the famous tomb is almost as unknown as his identity.

Along with staggering death tolls, the "Great War" generated memorable literature, geopolitical upheaval, hope, disillusion, the Russian Revolution and the seeds of World War II.

The first mass police shooting on a U.S. college campus happened two years before the Ohio National Guard opened fire on student protesters at Kent State University.

Mark Twain first laid eyes on a “newfangled typing machine,” as he called it, sometime in the early 1870s.

When Gerald Ford took over the presidency after Richard Nixon’s resignation, he soon made a controversial choice: he pardoned Nixon.

Some believed that a lottery was more democratic than a vote.

In 1950, Mary Ann Van Hoof gathered an estimated 100,000 people to see the Virgin Mary on a farm in Necedah, Wisconsin.

From the mid-1800s to well into the 20th century, the Capitol’s Demon Cat was the top dog of Washington ghost stories.

In 1956, New York City’s bomb squad used criminal profiling to catch a terrorist known as “The Mad Bomber.”

Civil rights crusader Fannie Lou Hamer rivaled Martin Luther King Jr. in her command of audiences.

Photographer Boris Yaro shot the haunting photograph of Bobby Kennedy lying fatally wounded in the arms of Juan Romero, a busboy.

In 1777, Captain John Paul Jones hatched a plan to take the American Revolution to Britain’s shores.

President Abraham Lincoln had two loving and supportive mothers in his lifetime. The second helped him cope with the tragic loss of the first.

Before an unnamed senior official in the Trump administration published the opinion piece, “I am part of the resistance inside the Trump administration" in the New York Times, another mysterious anonymous author lit up Washington.

Family and friends had known about the president’s intimate relationship with Mary Peck for years, but whispers about their involvement were growing.

Emmett Till’s mother opened his casket and sparked the civil rights movement.

More than 50,000 soldiers died during the Battle of Waterloo, but their teeth lived on.

Despite warnings of icebergs, the John Rutledge set sail from Liverpool, England, to New York.

In the fall of 1902, a year into his presidency, President Teddy Roosevelt set off to Mississippi for a bear-hunting vacation. It ended differently than planned.

The one night that changed President Nixon’s fate has stuck with us as a reminder of the limits of presidential power.

It may be hard to believe, but one single event rocketed Einstein to fame.

One simple change to how the Supreme Court bench was designed made a world of difference to how the justices communicated.

Ida Lewis saved as many as 25 people during her service at the lighthouse. But her deeds have largely been forgotten.

Freddie Oversteegen was 14 when she joined the Dutch resistance.

Thomas Blood had somewhat of a shady past. According to Ireland’s History magazine, he had a reputation for espionage and conducting terrorist campaigns — though many of his plans were foiled just in time.

Heather Penney was among the first female combat pilots in the country. On Sept. 11, 2001, she got a mission: Bring down the fourth hijacked plane hurtling towards Washington.

Both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln wrote poetry. But only one had a way with words.

A mysterious stone memorial was found in 2006 in Washington, D.C. But who placed a memorial to Nazi spies on government property? And why?

According to James Madison’s Virginia mansion Montpelier, Paul Jennings’ account reveals, “how the racial and gender hierarchies of the time complicate the way we understand roles in historic events.”

Their 38-year marriage endured his incarceration and hers.

A group of poor women in Puerto Rico were the first test subjects for the birth control pill. Were they guinea pigs or pioneers?

Was the Duke of Windsor a Nazi sympathizer? Did he plot to dethrone his brother, King George VI? Did he really suggest more German bombings of Britain might end World War II?

In October 1967, antiwar protesters announced that they would march en masse to the front steps of the Pentagon. and levitate it. And then they would try to levitate it.

Besides President Trump, whom do scholars scorn the most?

In 1935, the Florida Keys ignored the threat of a looming hurricane. When the Category 5 storm made landfall, it left a wake of death and destruction.

At the Naval Academy, McCain was in a group called the “Bad Bunch” as he rebelled against his father’s expectations.

By 1968, things were going badly for President Lyndon B. Johnson. Morale around the Vietnam War was sinking, and in Washington, political sharks were circling.

All over the country, couples rushed to Las Vegas to get married. The demand for quickie weddings was at a fever pitch. But it wasn't Cupid's arrow causing the frenzy. It was the Vietnam War.

In 1927, the world watched as two French aviators attempted the world’s first transatlantic flight.

Lewis Hine posed as a Bible salesman or machinery photographer to expose the hardships of child labor.

In a year of extraordinary, chaotic moments this was a hopeful one - a beat-up country music star recording an album live at a troubled maximum security prison in California.

Ski jumping involves flying more than 800 feet in the air and then landing on two feet, without dying. Where on earth did this sport come from?

Samuel Cutler Ward, also known as the “King of the Lobby,” is credited with shaping the craft of lobbying. And like lobbyist and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, he also had some seriously expensive tastes.

"The Birth of a Nation" depicted life after the Civil War in a way that glorified Klansmen. The film and its cultural impact led one man to conclude that the time was right to bring back the Klu Klux Klan.

It’s World War II, and you’re King George VI of England. You fear a Nazi invasion of England could come at any moment. How do you protect the crown jewels? Not even Queen Elizabeth II knew how her dad did it - until recently.

An American in the 1940s would not recognize the woman from the “We Can Do It!” poster as Rosie the Riveter.

When President Reagan told Mr. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” it was not seen as a historic moment. It took the actual fall of the wall to resurrect the speech and drill the quote into the nation's political consciousness.

The anti-Semitic conspiracy theories surrounding the Rothschild family date all the way back to The Battle of Waterloo.

In April 1917, Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress, faced an agonizing choice: should she, or should she not, vote for the United States to enter World War I?

In 1925, 30,000 Klansmen descended on Washington, D.C. The city cheered their arrival.