Richard G. Backus
📚 Publisher & Podcaster | 🎙️ Host of The Daily History Chronicle & The Literary Deep Dive | 💼 Retired Investment Banker | 🎸 Blues Musician | 🔍 Former Criminal Investigator | 🎓 Adjunct University Instructor | 🎖️ Army Officer | ✍️ Prolific Writer | 🗺️ Soldier of Fortune | Making history & literature relevant.
Appears in 219 Episodes
Stolen March - June 6, 1966
On June 6, 1966, James Meredith was shot by a sniper on the second day of his solo March Against Fear through Mississippi, and within hours, a civil rights movement he...
The Plague With No Name - June 5, 1981
On June 5, 1981, the CDC published five paragraphs that changed American history, the first official documentation of what we now call AIDS. What followed was not a si...
Two Revolutions, One Day - June 4, 1989
On June 4, 1989, two communist governments faced the same crisis and gave opposite answers. In Poland, Solidarity’s decade-long resistance produced a historic election...
Patriots With Clubs - June 3, 1943
On June 3, 1943, fifty U.S. Navy sailors walked out of a Los Angeles armory with clubs and spent the night dragging Mexican-American teenagers from movie theaters, and...
The Bullet That Built Germany - June 2, 1967
The bullet that killed Ohnesorg didn't just end one life. It radicalized a generation and simultaneously produced two of the most consequential political movements in ...
The Plane Britain Let Die - June 1, 1943
On June 1, 1943, a passenger aircraft was shot down over the Bay of Biscay by eight German fighters and everyone aboard, including one of the most famous actors in th...
Drowned By The Rich - May 31, 1889
On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam collapsed above Johnstown, Pennsylvania, killing 2,209 people in one of the deadliest disasters in American history. The dam was pr...
Shot Dead on Memorial Day - May 30, 1937
On Memorial Day 1937, fifteen hundred workers, families, and supporters marched toward a Chicago steel plant singing union songs and carrying American flags, exercisin...
Worse Than Titanic - May 29, 1914
On May 29, 1914, the RMS Empress of Ireland sank in fourteen minutes in the St. Lawrence River, killing 1,012 people, more passengers than the Titanic. She carried eve...
Washington's First Mistake - May 28, 1754
On May 28, 1754, a 22-year-old George Washington led a predawn ambush in a Pennsylvania forest that lasted fifteen minutes and set the world on fire. The skirmish at J...
The Children of Lidice - May 27, 1942
On May 27, 1942, two paratroopers dropped from a British aircraft and ambushed one of the most dangerous men in the world on a Prague street corner. The mission succee...
Fire Before Dawn - May 26, 1637
On May 26, 1637, English soldiers and their Native allies burned the Pequot village at Mystic, Connecticut, killing hundreds of women, children, and elders before dawn...
The Republic Nobody Saved - May 25, 1895
On May 25, 1895, Taiwan declared itself the Republic of Formosa, claiming to be Asia's first democratic republic, only to be crushed by Japan 151 days later, while the...
God's Righteous Butcher - May 24, 1856
On May 24, 1856, abolitionist John Brown led his sons and a small band of men to three farmhouses along Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas, and committed five murders he belie...
The Crown’s Perfect Scapegoat - May 23, 1701
On May 23, 1701, Captain William Kidd was hanged twice at Execution Dock in London. History calls him a pirate. The documented record calls him something more troublin...
American Heroes Became Patent Warlords - May 22, 1906
On May 22, 1906, Orville and Wilbur Wright received a patent for their flying machine and launched one of the most destructive legal campaigns in American industrial h...
Built on a Million Graves - May 21, 1998
On May 21, 1998, Indonesian President Suharto resigned after 32 years of authoritarian rule, ending one of the 20th century's most remarkable and devastating reigns. H...
The Republic that Sold Its Soul for Sugar - May 20 , 1802
On May 20th, 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte signed a law reinstating slavery in France's overseas colonies, reversing the abolition decree of 1794 and re-enslaving people th...
The Day the Law Took Sides and Shot Back - May 19, 1920
On May 19, 1920, in the coal town of Matewan, West Virginia, a ninety-second gun battle between miners and a private detective agency killed ten men and ignited the la...
The Bombing America Forgot - May 18, 1927
On May 18, 1927, a school board treasurer in Bath, Michigan detonated explosives he had secretly planted beneath an elementary school, killing 38 children in what rema...
