HISTORY This Week

This week, something momentous happened. Whether or not it made the textbooks, it most certainly made history. Join HISTORY This Week as we meet the people, visit the places and witness the moments that led us to where we are today.

It Was Said, a limited documentary podcast series, looks back on some of the most powerful, impactful and timeless speeches in American history. Written and narrated by Pulitzer Prize winning and best-selling author-historian Jon Meac...

November 7, 1876. A little before midnight on election night, the Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes admits defeat and goes to bed. The Democrat Samuel J. Tilden has swept the electoral college, and by morning, he will almost certainly have the v...

January 11th, 1964. The US Surgeon General announces: smoking is killing us. This week we ask: why did it take so long for the public to learn this deadly truth? And why has it taken even longer for us to accept it?

January 15, 1919. Boston PD receives a call: “Send all available rescue personnel...there's a wave of molasses coming down Commercial Street." The bizarre flood decimated Boston's North End. How did it happen? And why does it still affec...

January 22, 1984. Apple launches the first Macintosh computer, with a showstopping Super Bowl commercial. The ad itself was revolutionary, but the product it launched almost single-handedly brought computers into the mainstream, changing the world as w...

January 27, 1945. This week, we commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, one of Nazi Germany's largest concentration and extermination camps. But what did liberation actually mean and is the full story being forgotten?

February 3, 1870. The 15th Amendment is ratified, which establishes the right to vote for black men in America. While Jim Crow laws would grip the south by 1877, there was a brief, seven-year window of opportunity. Half a million black voters turned ou...

February 11, 1940. Hattie McDaniel becomes the first-ever African American to be nominated for, and then win, an Oscar. What did it take for McDaniel to win? And, 80 Oscar ceremonies later, how do we understand her legacy today?

February 21, 1994. The FBI arrests one of the deadliest double agents in CIA history. He received almost $2 Million from the KGB, selling CIA secrets and lethally betraying undercover agents. Who was this man and why does a spy turn on their own country?