Join Don Wildman twice a week for your hit of American history, as he explores the past to help us understand the United States of today. We’ll hear how codebreakers uncovered secret Japanese plans for the Battle of Midway, visit Chief Powhatan as he prepares for war with the British, see Walt Disney accuse his former colleagues of being communists, and uncover the dark history that lies beneath Central Park. From pre-colonial America to independence, slavery to civil rights, the gold rush to the space race, join Don as he speaks to leading experts to delve into America’s past. New episodes every Monday and Thursday. Brought to you by History Hit, the award-winning podcast network and world’s best history channel on demand, featuring shows like Dan Snow’s History Hit, Not Just The Tudors and Betwixt the Sheets.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
429 episodes transcribedAfter suffering defeat after defeat, George Washington’s battered army was forced to retreat into the forests of rural Pennsylvania, where they set up...
Why would the United States have welcomed Nazis after the Second World War? Through Operation Paperclip, more than 1,500 German and Austrian scientist...
When did the first humans arrive in America? Archaeologists have long pushed the theory that human habitation in the Americas dates back only to about...
How did a President who was so reluctant to ramp up America's presence in Vietnam become the one who increased it more than any other? When Lyndon...
What drew the Latter Day Saints to Utah? Was anyone living there before the arrival of Brigham Young? And how did the city develop?Max Perry Mueller j...
Thomas Jefferson has had no issue being remembered in American History. Ask anyone, this man was fundamental to Independence. But did he fight in the...
76 people died on 19th April 1993 when the compound of a religious sect, the Branch Davidians, went up in flames. It had been under siege by governmen...
General William Tecumseh Sherman's famous invasion of the Confederacy in 1864 has become American legendary... but what did Union troops do along thei...
What makes a bad President? Who was the worst of all time? In this episode from the archive, Don is joined by Professor Jeremi Suri, author of The Imp...
Signatory of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, James Wilson was a sitting Supreme Court justice when he died. So why is he mi...
We're all taught in school about the Louisiana Purchase, supposedly the greatest bargain in American history. Napoleon's deal with the Americans is wi...
When and where did the Civil War end? Was it really over when Lee surrendered at Appomattox?Don is joined for this episode by Caroline E. Janney, Prof...
Over the course of this series, we've discussed the extraordinary promise of Reconstruction, as well as the relentless attacks these efforts came unde...
On March 5 1911, 146 people died in a fire that lasted just 18 minutes. This event was to change the history of New York, and has an ongoing impact in...
Reconstruction promised freedom and political equality, but how quickly did that promise begin to unravel? Why did white Southern resistance become so...
In March 1862, wooden warships had dominated global warfare for centuries. In less than 48 hours off the coast of Virginia, two experimental metal mon...
With the end of the Civil War, four million formerly enslaved people in the South were now free. It was the beginning of a remarkable experiment: rebu...
In 1896 the Supreme Court ruled that Jim Crow segregation laws were not unconstitutional in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. This is the case that Brow...
Across the defeated Confederacy, there had been an expectation that those who had taken up arms against their citizens would be punished. This did not...
Can you think of a time in history when a law has been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court?Having been used over 180 times, judicial review is...
