Bad Decisions

Catastrophes, blunders and moments people really should have known better.

32 episodes

Unexpected Twists in History on 28th September

Join Clara Vale in this episode of The Daily Time Drop as we uncover a series of surprising historical events that occurred on the 28th of September. From the glitzy night race of Formula One in Singapore to grand revelations in the realms of space and ocean exploration, Clara navigates through a tapestry of human ingenuity and folly. Discover ‘Crashgate’, the scandal that shook the racing world and secured Fernando Alonso an unexpected win. Journey to the stars with SpaceX’s Falcon 1, the rocket that launched a new era of private space ventures. Dive deep into the sea with scientists capturing the elusive giant squid in its natural habitat and explore the moment NASA found evidence of water on Mars, reshaping our cosmic aspirations. Each story is a testament to human curiosity, ambition, and the odd twists of fate that history often reveals.

Read & listen →

The Salad Bar Bioterror Attack That Changed America

On 24 September 1984, members of the Rajneeshpuram commune in rural Oregon began deliberately contaminating salad bars in The Dalles with Salmonella bacteria. Over the following weeks, 751 people fell ill in what became the largest bioterrorist attack on American soil. The motive was chillingly simple: suppress voter turnout in a local election. The truth wouldn’t emerge for over a year, and only when the commune’s leadership fell apart from within. This episode explores how a religious commune’s power grab exposed fundamental vulnerabilities in public health systems and shaped modern understanding of bioterrorism. Also covered: Terry Herbert’s discovery of the Staffordshire Hoard in 2009, the largest Anglo-Saxon gold find in history; Henri Giffard’s pioneering steam-powered airship flight in 1852; and the rather unfortunate case of Japan Airlines Flight 472, which in 1972 managed to land at entirely the wrong airport in Bombay.

Read & listen →

The Five Thousand Percent Man and the Cabinet Duel

On 21 September 2015, the price of a life-saving drug called Daraprim rose from $13.50 to $750 per tablet overnight, a 5,455% increase that sparked global outrage and forced a national conversation about pharmaceutical pricing. Clare Vale unpacks Martin Shkreli’s infamous decision and its human cost, then steps back to 1809, when two serving British Cabinet ministers resolved a political dispute with pistols on Putney Heath. The episode also visits the 2018 legislative elections in Eswatini, where political parties remain banned by royal decree, and closes with the 1983 FCC approval of the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, the world’s first commercially available mobile phone. Four stories about power, pricing, politics, and the devices that quietly changed everything.

Read & listen →

The Balloon Escape Over the Iron Curtain and a Pope Excommunicated After Death

On 16 September 1979, two East German families flew a homemade hot air balloon over the Iron Curtain in one of the Cold War’s most audacious escapes. The Strelzyks and Wetzels, ordinary citizens from Pössneck, built a 28-metre balloon from taffeta and cotton bought in secret, then flew eight people, including four children, across the heavily militarised border in 28 minutes of flight. They landed in Bavaria, free. Also on this date in 681, the Sixth Ecumenical Council excommunicated Pope Honorius I, 42 years after his death, for letters that seemed to support the Monothelite heresy. The posthumous condemnation fuelled debates about papal authority for over a millennium. And in 1732, a lightning strike hit the armoury in Campo Maior, Portugal, causing an explosion that killed roughly 800 people, two-thirds of the town’s population. The town was rebuilt and today hosts the vibrant Festa do Povo flower festival. Three stories about walls, literal and theological, and what people do when faced with them.

Read & listen →

The Glowing Scrap: When a Forgotten Radiotherapy Machine Contaminated a City

On 13 September 1987, two scavengers in Goiânia, Brazil broke into an abandoned radiotherapy clinic and stole a teletherapy machine containing caesium-137. They did not know what it was. They only knew it looked valuable. Over the following days, the ruptured radioactive capsule spread contamination across multiple households. The powder inside glowed blue in the dark, and people, fascinated, gathered to see it. A six-year-old girl ate a sandwich after touching it. Within weeks, four people were dead and 249 were contaminated in one of the worst radiological accidents in history. The disaster exposed systemic regulatory failures around medical radioactive sources and changed international protocols on the disposal of such equipment. Also remembered today: the mysterious 1971 death of Lin Biao, Mao’s designated successor, in a plane crash over Mongolia following an alleged coup attempt, and the 1807 premiere of Beethoven’s Mass in C major, which Prince Esterházy disliked so intensely that Beethoven left early and never received another commission from him.

Read & listen →

From Game Show Scandals to Space Adventures

Explore the peculiar tale of Charles Ingram’s game show scandal on 10th September 2001, where coughs led to infamy instead of fortune. Then, travel back to 1980 when Libya and Syria announced an ambitious, yet ultimately fruitless, plan to unite. Fast forward to 2024, an era where private space exploration takes a monumental leap with Polaris Dawn’s historic spacewalk. Finally, revisit 2023, as the African Union joins the G20, marking a pivotal moment in global dialogue. Hosted by Clare Vale, The Daily Time Drop unravels unique historical events, showcasing the constant dance between ambition and reality.

Read & listen →

Beard Taxes, Six-Century Concerts, and the Posthumous Champion

On 5 September 1698, Peter the Great signed one of history’s strangest policy decisions into law: a tax on beards. Fresh from an 18-month incognito tour of Western Europe, the Russian tsar returned determined to drag his nobility into the modern age, one expensive facial hair licence at a time. Meanwhile, on the same date in 2001, a concert began in Germany that won’t finish until 2640. John Cage’s As Slow As Possible plays notes that last for months, with chord changes announced years in advance. In 1661, royal finance minister Nicolas Fouquet was arrested by the real D’Artagnan after throwing a party so lavish it enraged Louis XIV. And in 1970, Formula One driver Jochen Rindt became the sport’s only posthumous world champion after a fatal crash at Monza left him with an unbeatable points lead. Four stories from one date: human ambition, cultural reform, artistic patience, and quiet tragedy.

Read & listen →

The Asteroid We Saw Coming and Other Acts of Human Overconfidence

On 4 September 2024, a small asteroid designated 2024 RW1 entered Earth’s atmosphere above the Philippines. What made this event remarkable wasn’t the impact itself, small asteroids burn up regularly, but the fact that astronomers had spotted it nine hours in advance. It was only the ninth time in recorded history that humans had detected an incoming asteroid before atmospheric entry. The same date also marks the 1985 discovery of buckminsterfullerene, a geodesic sphere of sixty carbon atoms that earned its discoverers a Nobel Prize and changed materials science. In 1999, Poland inaugurated a new longwave radio transmitter to replace the Konstantynów mast, once the tallest structure on Earth, which had collapsed during maintenance eight years earlier. And in 1975, East Timorese refugees hijacked an Australian military aircraft in a desperate bid to reach safety as Indonesian occupation loomed. From planetary defence systems that actually work to carbon molecules shaped like footballs, 4 September is a study in human ingenuity, occasional hubris, and the remarkable things we manage when we’re paying attention.

Read & listen →

When a Salad Bar Became a Bioterror Crime Scene

On 29 August 1984, two county commissioners in rural Oregon fell mysteriously ill after visiting a religious commune. What followed was the first large-scale bioterrorist attack in American history: 751 people poisoned across ten restaurants as part of a failed election-rigging scheme. This episode also explores the catastrophic opening day of Mainz Cathedral in 1009, when the newly consecrated building caught fire during its own inauguration ceremony; the 1991 murder of Sicilian businessman Libero Grassi, who publicly refused to pay protection money to the Mafia; and Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s 1588 Sword Hunt ordinance, which disarmed Japan’s peasantry and cemented the samurai class system for centuries. Four stories from the same calendar date, each revealing what happens when humans attempt to control the future through planning, power, or sheer bloody-minded refusal to comply. History, as ever, keeps its options open.

Read & listen →

The Collar Bomb Heist, Asteroid Moons, and a Reluctant Candidate

On 28 August 2003, pizza delivery driver Brian Wells walked into a Pennsylvania bank with a bomb locked around his neck, setting in motion what the FBI would call one of the most bizarre crimes in its history. The same date in 1993 brought two very different discoveries: NASA’s Galileo spacecraft accidentally photographed the first confirmed moon orbiting an asteroid, a tiny rock called Dactyl circling the asteroid Ida. Meanwhile, Singapore held its first popular presidential election, though one candidate had been recruited specifically to make the ballot look contested. From a meticulously planned crime that ended in tragedy, to an unplanned cosmic discovery, to a democratic exercise with pre-sorted outcomes, 28 August offers three stories about what happens when human plans meet reality. Some crimes are too strange for ordinary explanation. Some discoveries hide in the corners of photographs. And some elections have their winners chosen before the voting begins.

Read & listen →

The Harvey's Casino Bomb, Prince Bernhard's Bribes, and Orellana's Accidental Epic

On 26 August 1980, the FBI accidentally detonated one of the most sophisticated extortion bombs in American history whilst trying to defuse it. The Harvey’s Resort Hotel device, built by John Birges, contained a thousand pounds of dynamite and multiple anti-tamper mechanisms. The blast caused twelve million dollars in damage, but remarkably, no casualties. Also on this date: in 1976, letters confirmed Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands had accepted 1.1 million dollars in bribes from Lockheed, prompting Queen Juliana to threaten abdication if he faced prosecution. In 1542, Francisco de Orellana reached the Atlantic after accidentally navigating the entire length of the Amazon, a 4,800-kilometre journey that began as a supply run. And in 1642, Dutch forces expelled the Spanish from northern Taiwan, ending a sixteen-year colonial presence most people have never heard of. Four stories of ambition, overconfidence, and the universe’s very dry sense of humour.

Read & listen →

The Lake That Exhaled: Cameroon's Silent Disaster of 1986

On 21 August 1986, Lake Nyos in Cameroon released approximately 1.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in a catastrophic limnic eruption, killing an estimated 1,700 to 1,800 people as the invisible gas cloud rolled through nearby valleys. The disaster, one of only three such events ever recorded, prompted the development of controlled degassing systems still in use today. This episode also examines the Douglas DC-8’s brief supersonic test flight in 1961, when a commercial airliner deliberately broke the sound barrier during a controlled dive over California, and the deliberate crash of Royal Air Maroc Flight 630 in 1994, an early confirmed case of pilot suicide that killed all 44 people aboard. Three events on one date, each revealing something unexpected about the natural world, aviation engineering, and the difficult questions that still haunt air safety regulators.

Read & listen →

The Plane That Exploded After Landing (and Everyone Survived)

On 20 August 2007, China Airlines Flight 120 landed safely at Naha Airport in Okinawa, taxied to the gate, and then exploded into a fireball that consumed the entire aircraft. All 165 people on board survived. This episode examines how a single loose bolt triggered a catastrophic fuel leak, why modern aircraft engineering bought passengers just enough time to escape, and what the disaster revealed about aviation safety culture. Also on this day: Reinhold Messner completed the first solo ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen in 1980, pushing human endurance to its physiological edge. Venezuela introduced the bolívar soberano in 2018, erasing five zeros from its currency in an attempt to manage hyperinflation exceeding one million percent. And in 1519, the philosopher Wang Yangming crushed a rebellion against the Ming dynasty in just three days, proving that knowledge and action are sometimes the same thing. Four stories about survival, limits, absurdity, and the uncomfortable gap between what should happen and what actually does.

Read & listen →

Life of Brian, a Resigning Cardinal, and the Day Music Went Digital

On 17 August 1979, Monty Python’s Life of Brian premiered in New York, sparking protests and bans across multiple countries despite the film’s careful distinction between satire and blasphemy. George Harrison mortgaged his house to fund it, Sweden marketed it as ‘the film Norway banned’, and the resulting cultural conversation revealed more about human groupthink than any sermon. Meanwhile, in 1498, Cesare Borgia accomplished the impossible by resigning his cardinalate in the morning and becoming Duke of Valentinois by evening, the first person in Church history to hand back the red hat. In 2005, Bangladesh experienced over 500 coordinated bomb explosions across 63 districts in 30 minutes, a logistical demonstration of reach that shook an entire nation. And in 1982, PolyGram demonstrated the first commercial audio compact discs: Chopin waltzes and ABBA’s final album, launching the digital music era that would render its own format obsolete within three decades. Clara Vale examines four moments that demonstrate humanity’s talent for banning the wrong things, breaking the unbreakable rules, and building technologies we later abandon.

Read & listen →

When Morocco's Air Force Attacked Their King and He Talked Them Down

On 16 August 1972, King Hassan II of Morocco survived an aerial attack by his own air force. Six F-5 fighters intercepted his Boeing 727 over the Atlantic, opened fire, and killed several crew members before the attack collapsed. What happened next belongs in fiction: Hassan allegedly got on the radio himself and talked the pilots into standing down. He landed safely, reasserted control, and remained in power for another 27 years. This episode also explores a 1550 copyright dispute between Venetian printers over the Talmud, ruled on by Rabbi Moses Isserles and considered one of the earliest recorded copyright decisions. Finally, we revisit the 1989 solar particle event that forced the Toronto Stock Exchange to halt trading, a reminder that our digital infrastructure remains vulnerable to cosmic weather. Three strange stories from the sixteenth of August, each illustrating humanity’s talent for improvisation under pressure.

Read & listen →

The Doctor Who Tried to Steal Hawaii, and the Secret That Changed the Cold War

On 19 July 1817, German doctor Georg Anton Schäffer was expelled from Kauaʻi after a spectacular two-year attempt to claim the Hawaiian Islands for the Russian Empire without any authority to do so. He built three forts, raised the Russian flag, and drafted treaties with a local king hoping to escape Kamehameha’s dominance, but the promised warships never came. Fast forward to 19 July 1981, when French President François Mitterrand handed Ronald Reagan the Farewell Dossier in Ottawa, revealing a massive Soviet operation to steal Western technology. The CIA’s response involved feeding the KGB subtly sabotaged secrets, including pipeline software that may have caused one of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever recorded. Seven years later, on 19 July 1988, Bruce Springsteen performed for up to 300,000 people at the largest concert in East German history, speaking about barriers coming down sixteen months before the Berlin Wall fell. And in 2003, surgeons in Vienna completed the world’s first successful tongue transplant, restoring speech and taste through fourteen hours of surgery involving over thirty specialists. Four stories of human ambition, geopolitical manoeuvring, cultural defiance, and medical innovation, all sharing the same date in history.

Read & listen →

Netscape Dies, Mozilla Is Born, and Nintendo Changes Gaming Forever

On 15 July 2003, AOL Time Warner quietly shut down Netscape, the browser that once commanded 90% of the market. On the same day, the Mozilla Foundation opened its doors as an independent non-profit, carrying forward the open-source code Netscape had released in 1998. That code would become Firefox, challenge Internet Explorer, and influence the modern web as we know it. Twenty years earlier, on 15 July 1983, Nintendo released the Famicom in Japan, a small red and white console that would become the NES and establish the template for platform gaming worldwide. And on 15 July 1996, a Belgian Air Force C-130 Hercules crashed on approach to Eindhoven Airport in the Netherlands, killing 34 people, including members of the Royal Netherlands Army marching band. Three moments on one date: a browser that died to give birth to something better, a console that rewrote the rules of play, and 34 lives lost in an accident that still marks the calendar with grief.

Read & listen →

When George Bush Was President for Eight Hours

On 13 July 1985, Vice President George H. W. Bush became Acting President of the United States for approximately eight hours whilst Ronald Reagan underwent surgery under general anaesthetic. It was the first time the Twenty-Fifth Amendment’s provisions for voluntary transfer of power had been used in practice, if not technically invoked. Bush spent his brief tenure playing golf in Maine, a masterclass in constitutional restraint. The episode also explores a failed 2003 French intelligence operation to rescue hostage Íngrid Betancourt from FARC guerrillas, the 645 CE Isshi Incident that reshaped Japanese imperial politics through assassination and reform, and the 1925 discovery of the Venus of Dolní Věstonice, one of the oldest known ceramic objects in the world, dating back some 26,000 to 31,000 years. From presidential procedures to ice age artistry, the thirteenth of July offers a cross-section of human decision-making at its most careful, most violent, and most enduring.

Read & listen →

Frobisher's Ghost Island, El Chapo's Tunnel, and the First Phone Photo

On 11 July across three centuries, three men made their mark through confidence, ingenuity, and technological ambition. In 1576, explorer Martin Frobisher sighted Greenland but mistakenly identified it as Frisland, a non-existent island shown on the influential but fictional Zeno Map. His error illuminates the challenges of 16th-century navigation and the consequences of cartographic fiction. In 2015, drug lord Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán escaped Mexico’s Altiplano maximum security prison through a sophisticated 1.5-kilometre tunnel, exposing security failures and triggering an international manhunt. In 1997, Philippe Kahn shared the first photograph from a mobile phone, an image of his newborn daughter sent while waiting in a California hospital, prefiguring the instant visual communication now used by billions daily. Three stories of exploration, escape, and innovation reveal the enduring human capacity for ambition, both misguided and transformative.

Read & listen →

The 1,720-Foot Wave That Rewrote the Science Books

On 10 July 1958, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake triggered the largest wave in recorded history. Ninety million tons of rock crashed into Lituya Bay, Alaska, sending water surging 1,720 feet up the mountainside, stripping trees and soil in a single catastrophic event. Three fishing boats were caught in the bay that night. Two crews survived against impossible odds. One did not. The megatsunami redefined what scientists believed water could do and remains the defining case study in coastal hazard modelling. Also on this day: French intelligence agents sank the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour in 1985, killing one photographer and sparking an international scandal. And in 2018, the final four members of a Thai youth football team emerged from the Tham Luang cave system after 18 days underground, completing one of the most remarkable rescue operations of the century. Clara Vale explores a day when history arrived as a wall of water, a covert bombing, and a moment of extraordinary human coordination.

Read & listen →

The Man Who Fell 2,400 Metres and Lived

On 9 July 1997, engineer Fernando Caldeira de Moura Campos was ejected from an exploding TAM Airlines Fokker 100 at 2,400 metres altitude over Brazil, without a parachute. Against all odds, he survived the fall. This episode also examines Earth’s shortest recorded day on 9 July 2025, when the planet’s rotation ran 1.3 to 1.6 milliseconds fast, raising the prospect of a negative leap second. We revisit the 1985 Austrian wine scandal, when producers were caught adulterating wine with diethylene glycol, an antifreeze component, leading to collapsed exports and ultimately some of the world’s strictest wine regulations. Finally, we return to 9 July 2006, when Zinédine Zidane headbutted Marco Materazzi in the World Cup final, ending his career with a red card rather than a trophy. Four stories of survival, precision, scandal, and one very public loss of composure.

Read & listen →

Broomsticks, Border Controls, and Three Presidents in One Day

On 8 July across different years, history delivered a masterclass in human ambition, catastrophic misjudgement, and bureaucratic precision. In 2012, Oxford hosted the first Quidditch World Cup held outside the United States, as a sport invented in a fantasy novel became a genuine international competition complete with broomsticks and world champions. In 1998, a French customs stop uncovered hundreds of doping products in a team car, triggering the Festina Affair that nearly ended that year’s Tour de France and exposed systematic drug use in professional cycling. In 2014, Brazil suffered the Mineiraço, losing 7-1 to Germany in a World Cup semi-final at home in what remains one of football’s most shocking results. And in 2010, Poland managed three different presidents in a single day through perfectly legal constitutional succession following the Smolensk air disaster. From fictional sports made real to sporting dreams destroyed, the eighth of July proves that history arrives in many forms, most of them unexpected.

Read & listen →

The Staffordshire Hoard and the Stolen Codex Calixtinus

On 5 July 2009, unemployed metal detectorist Terry Herbert began unearthing over 1,500 pieces of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver from a Staffordshire field, the largest hoard of its kind ever found in Britain. The discovery, made with a £2.50 second-hand detector, transformed understanding of early medieval England and revealed military treasures of astonishing craftsmanship from the warrior kingdom of Mercia. Exactly two years later, on 5 July 2011, staff at Santiago de Compostela Cathedral noticed the disappearance of the Codex Calixtinus, a twelfth-century illuminated manuscript and the world’s first guidebook to the Camino pilgrimage route. The international investigation led to the arrest of a cathedral electrician who had stolen the irreplaceable manuscript along with other treasures. Both stories illuminate the tension between what we bury, what we lose, and what we find again, whether after a millennium or a single year.

Read & listen →

The Barony of Arizona: How to Steal Eleven Million Acres with Fake Documents

On 28 June 1895, a United States court delivered a verdict that ended one of the most audacious land frauds in American history. James Addison Reavis had spent over a decade claiming ownership of roughly eleven million acres of Arizona, armed with forged documents, a fabricated Spanish aristocratic title, and a wife he had specifically coached to play the role of Baroness. He had altered genuine historical archives across two continents, sold quit-claim deeds to major businesses, and convinced the world that the Barony of Arizona was real. It was not. Today, Clare Vale unpacks the spectacular rise and meticulous unravelling of the Peralta Grant, alongside the 1997 boxing match where Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield’s ear, the 1911 Martian meteorite that landed in Egypt, and the surprisingly modest origins of the modern dog show in Newcastle upon Tyne. History, as ever, rewards confidence, until someone checks the paperwork.

Read & listen →

Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' Sparks Unrest

In 1948, a short story by Shirley Jackson titled ‘The Lottery’ shook readers to their core. Published in The New Yorker, this tale of a seemingly benign small-town lottery with a shocking twist left audiences bewildered and led to a flurry of protests and subscription cancellations. The story’s unsettling commentary on blind tradition and conformity resonated powerfully in post-war America. Its impact has endured, solidifying its place as a classic in American literature. Shifting gears, we also explore the achievements of the Flying Scotsman locomotive, which set speed records in the 1920s, symbolising British engineering prowess. Finally, we delve into the signing of the United Nations Charter in 1945, a landmark event aimed at fostering global peace in the aftermath of World War Two.

Read & listen →

The Woman Who Made History in a Cathedral Full of Witnesses

On 25 June 1678, Elena Cornaro Piscopia became the first woman in recorded history to be awarded a doctorate of philosophy. The ceremony took place in the Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin in Padua because so many people arrived to witness it that the university’s halls could not contain them. Born into a Venetian noble family in 1646, Elena was fluent in seven languages, a published theologian, accomplished musician, and Benedictine oblate. When her father proposed her for a doctorate in theology, the Bishop of Padua objected, so she was examined in philosophy instead. She answered her examiners in Latin and was awarded the degree with distinction. She died four years later at age thirty-eight, and the University of Padua did not award another doctorate to a woman for three decades. Also on this date: the 1982 Disgrace of Gijón, when West Germany and Austria played a World Cup match so obviously fixed that FIFA changed its rules permanently; the first known photojournalistic image, taken during the violent June Days Uprising in Paris in 1848; and the 1900 discovery of the Dunhuang manuscripts, tens of thousands of ancient texts sealed in a cave for nine hundred years.

Read & listen →

Daring Walks, Typewriters, and Transformative Pills

Join Clara Vale as she navigates through some of history’s most compelling moments. From Nik Wallenda’s nerve-wracking tightrope walk over the Grand Canyon in 2013 to the invention of the ‘Type-Writer’ in 1868 by Christopher Latham Sholes, we explore feats of courage and innovation. We dive into the shadows of the Watergate scandal, revisiting Nixon’s pivotal misstep in 1972, and recognise IBM’s 1969 decision that shaped today’s software industry by pricing software separately from hardware. Finally, we celebrate the approval of Enovid by the FDA in 1960, a revolutionary development in personal freedom. In our journey, witness human ambition and its eventual impacts on society.

Read & listen →

The Fireman Who Sat on the Safety Valve and the Last Sparrow

On 17 June 1831, the Best Friend of Charleston, America’s first commercially built steam locomotive, exploded after a fireman sat on its safety valve to silence the hissing. The blast killed the fireman, injured the engineer, and destroyed the locomotive. The South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company rebuilt it as the Phoenix and introduced cotton bale buffers between engine and passengers, an early attempt at railway safety. Meanwhile, 156 years later on the same date, a small bird called Orange Band died at Walt Disney World. He was the last dusky seaside sparrow, a victim of habitat destruction, pesticide use, and delayed conservation efforts. Both stories centre on warnings ignored: the hiss of a valve designed to prevent disaster, and the slow disappearance of a species no one noticed until it was too late. Clara Vale tells the story of human overconfidence, new technology, and the cost of not listening when systems try to speak.

Read & listen →

Episode 10 8 min

The Captain Who Survived Being Sucked Out of His Own Cockpit

On 10 June 1990, British Airways Flight 5390 departed Birmingham for Malaga with a catastrophic flaw: a cockpit windscreen secured with the wrong bolts. Thirteen minutes into the flight, the panel blew out at 23,000 feet, dragging Captain Tim Lancaster headfirst through the opening. Flight attendant Nigel Ogden grabbed his legs and held on through 500-mile-per-hour winds and sub-zero temperatures, whilst co-pilot Alastair Atchison executed an emergency landing at Southampton with a captain dangling outside the aircraft. All 81 people aboard survived. The episode also marks the 1935 founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, when Dr Bob Smith took his last drink in Akron, Ohio, and recalls Kevin Warwick’s 2002 neural communication experiment and fifteen-year-old Joe Nuxhall’s chaotic 1944 baseball debut. A day of extraordinary human resilience in the face of impossible circumstances.

Read & listen →

Episode 9 9 min

A Reporter's Secret Life and the Question That Broke McCarthy

On 9 June 1930, Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Lingle was shot dead in a crowded pedestrian tunnel beneath Michigan Avenue. The Tribune launched a crusade, declaring him a journalistic martyr murdered for asking too many questions. Within weeks, the truth emerged: Lingle had been living far beyond his reporter’s salary, maintaining close ties to Al Capone, and allegedly owed the gangster’s organisation $100,000 in gambling debts. Twenty-four years later, on 9 June 1954, another kind of reckoning arrived. In a televised Senate hearing watched by millions, Boston lawyer Joseph Welch confronted Senator Joseph McCarthy with a question that became famous: ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?’ The moment is widely credited as the turning point that broke McCarthy’s power. Clara Vale explores two very different stories about accountability, the difference between access and independence, and the moments when someone finally asks the question everyone else has been thinking.

Read & listen →

Episode 5 9 min

The Last Transit of Venus and the Stories of 5 June

On 5 June 2012, millions watched Venus cross the face of the Sun for the last time in any living person’s lifetime. The next transit won’t occur until 2117. This rare celestial event once sent Captain Cook to Tahiti in 1769 and helped unlock the true scale of the solar system. But the fifth of June holds other remarkable stories: in 1983, the Soviet cruise ship Aleksandr Suvorov collided catastrophically with a railway bridge on the Volga River, killing over a hundred passengers. In 1995, physicists at the University of Colorado created the first Bose-Einstein condensate, a state of matter predicted by Einstein seventy years earlier. In 1956, Elvis Presley’s hip-swivelling performance of Hound Dog on The Milton Berle Show scandalised critics and ignited rock and roll on primetime television. And in 1949, Orapin Chaiyakan became the first woman elected to Thailand’s Parliament. From planetary mechanics to cultural flashpoints, this episode explores the moments that still resonate from a single day in history.

Read & listen →

Episode 3 9 min

The Last Great Auks and the Collectors Who Killed Them

On 3 June 1844, three Icelandic fishermen landed on the remote volcanic island of Eldey and killed the last confirmed breeding pair of great auks. The birds were strangled, their skins sold to a collector, and their egg cracked and abandoned. The species had survived ice ages and geological upheaval, but vanished within centuries of sustained human contact. What makes the extinction particularly stark is that it was not driven by necessity or ignorance. By the 1840s, naturalists and hunters alike knew the great auk was nearly gone, yet this rarity made specimens more valuable to museums and private collections, creating a market incentive that accelerated the final decline. Clare Vale explores this moment of documented extinction alongside other events from 3 June, including Chinese official Lin Zexu’s destruction of over a million kilograms of British opium in 1839, the 1969 collision between HMAS Melbourne and USS Frank E. Evans that killed 74 American sailors, and the founding of Barcelona’s Academy of the Distrustful in 1700, a scholarly society built on intellectual scepticism.

Read & listen →