Retropod

When Harry Truman became president in 1945, Southern members of Congress were delighted. They thought he’d be sympathetic to segregationists. He proved them wrong.

On display in Washington, D.C. are the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and another document that details a fundamental institution in American life: baseball.

A hungry congressman didn’t get the breakfast he ordered. So he shot the waiter.

Back in 1941, a get-together that should have been fraught with uneasiness didn't turn out that way, which is surprising given the participants: President Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin.

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.

A stamp collector’s discovery of the “Inverted Jenny” stamp created a headache for the U.S. Postal Service.

Mister Rogers’s approach to dealing with tragedy began with the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

The Alderson Federal Prison Camp has a history filled with powerful women who both pushed for the walls to be built there and served time within them.

During the American Revolution, more patriots died as prisoners of war in or around New York City than died in combat.

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

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

Sixty years after Congress welcomed its first woman, it welcomed its first baby.

The Boy Scout movement began 110 years ago on a tiny island just off the southern coast of England.

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

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

For over 50 years, the phrase “under God” was not a part of the Pledge of Allegiance. One sermon changed that.

This episode addresses the history of the bikini in, naturally, two parts.

Linda Brown and her father Oliver Brown are heroes of the civil rights movement. The backstory of the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education is more complicated than what you learned in school.

In 1951, a televised Senate hearing caught America’s attention.

It did not rain, at least not in Ellicott City, Md. That’s what made the 1868 flood so bizarre and unexpected.

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

On April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was in Memphis to support sanitation workers who were protesting for their civil rights. It was there that King delivered his last speech.

From 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.

The deadliest wildfire in U.S. history wasn’t in California.

Whether you believe in this stuff or not, the many accounts that have spilled out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue over two centuries give ghosts an undeniable place in the country’s history.

She was just 5 feet tall. There was once a $40,000 bounty on her head. She suffered seizures throughout her life. She never gave up. She never gave in.

Washington and his fellow partiers racked up a bill of $15,000 in today’s currency celebrating the completion of the Constitution.

The justice who helped persuade a majority of the Supreme Court to legalize abortion found the practice unthinkable — personally, but not constitutionally.

At a White House luncheon, actress Eartha Kitt would not let the president or the first lady avoid the issue of the Vietnam War. She paid a heavy price for her boldness.

Oregon’s original constitution banned black people from the state, and the law stayed in the constitution for well over 100 years.

Eleanor Roosevelt held news conferences just for female reporters. The men were not impressed.

Spoiler: It did not go well.

In 1971, Stephen Burns was 18 years old and a newly minted voter. He was so jazzed to be a part of the Democratic process.

Somehow, in the depths of his personal misery towards the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson had found his powerful way with words again.

The Tuskegee syphilis experiment is a horrific piece of American history.

In a largely forgotten experiment, a group of students from Gallaudet University spent years helping NASA understand the mechanisms of motion sickness, and how to prevent it.

In 1998, the world briefly panicked over an asteroid that seemed headed for a close call with Earth. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.

For the past 100 years, Mata Hari has been revered as the quintessential glamorous spy. But the real Mata Hari was much more complicated.

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?

"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.

The very first pride parade was held in 1964 and was a bit … calmer … than what we think of today.

Charles Asbury’s newly digitized songs serve as a time capsule to the music of the 19th century.

Besides President Trump, whom do scholars scorn the most?

Doughnuts aren’t just delicious. They also helped America win a war.

For most of American history, no one was scared of sharks. One week - and one shark - changed that.

George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, two great presidents, had a lot in common: Both lost a parent as a child, both had a serious demeanor, and both dabbled with writing poetry. But only one was any good at poetry.

The man who called the police on the Watergate burglars never received the credit he deserved.

In December 1805, a handful of prominent politicians receive invitations to join President Thomas Jefferson for a White House dinner. The occasion was the arrival of a Tunisian envoy to the U.S., Sidi Soliman Mellimelli, who was observing Ramadan.

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.

The Kinneys married in Washington, D.C. in 1874. Then, they were arrested back home in Virginia for violating the state’s laws. They fought the ruling in higher and higher courts, but never won the right to stay married in their home state.