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.
380 episodes transcribedIn Spring 1961, the Space Race between the US and Soviet Union was well underway. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in Space in A...
For thousands of years, nomadic Native American peoples crossed the Yellowstone River basin, in awe of its stunning landscape and geothermal wond...
From 1956 to 1971, J. Edgar Hoover ran COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program). A series of covert and illegal FBI operations aimed at surveilling, i...
J. Edgar Hoover was the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 48 years. He grew the FBI from a small, obscure operation to one that empl...
From the 1880s to the 1920s the United States experienced a huge wave of immigration. People fleeing poverty and political instability in Europe, plus...
Dr Martin Luther King Jr was one of the figureheads of the civil rights movement in America. On 28th August 1963, he made one of the greatest English...
One of the most famous writers ever to have lived, Charles Dickens travelled twice to the US, in 1842 and 1867. This made him one of the first transat...
Join Don as he visits Benjamin Franklin's home of nearly 16 years: 36 Craven Street, London. Now a museum, its director Marcia Balisciano explains wha...
Gone with the Wind, released in 1939, is the highest-grossing film of all time. Based on Margaret Mitchell's novel published a few years earlier, it i...
It’s December 1912 and we’re joining in with the festivities at Highclere Castle, in London England. The prime minister is Herbert H. Asquith and King...
Modern humans thrived in the Americas for thousands of years before the first European colonists arrived, but how and when did they get there?What's m...
As the British and French colonies in North America expanded in the middle of the 18th century, they inevitably clashed. Fighting between the two side...
In the early 19th century, amidst the Napoleonic wars, the British began restricting the United States’ trade with Europe. On top of this, the British...
On 5th September, 1901, President William McKinley attended a public reception at the Pan American Exposition, a 6-month-long World’s Fair, in Buffalo...
On the morning of 7th December 1941, hundreds of Japanese planes took off from aircraft carriers and attacked Pearl Harbor, on Oahu island, Hawaii. Th...
Space historian Jay Gallentine tells Don how World War 2 weapons paved the way for space rockets, igniting a space race between the USA and the USSR t...
On shooting President Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth fled Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC on horseback, eventually heading south. But Lincoln’s w...
On the evening of 14th April, 1865, the Union was celebrating victory in the civil war, won 5 days earlier with General Lee's surrender at Appomattox....
In the fall of 1621, a year after the pilgrim ship the Mayflower landed on the coast of New England, the settlers of the Plymouth Colony celebrated th...
When Ronald Reagan became President in 1981, he was initially written off by many as a reckless B movie cowboy who would lead the US to nuclear war.Ho...
