Scott Allsop's Blog, page 211

8th August 1963: The Great Train Robbery takes place

On the 8th August 1963, a gang of 15 men attacked a Royal Mail train heading from Glasgow to London and stole over £2.6million in cash. Worth £50million today, the vast majority of the money was never recovered. A core team of five men with backgrounds in organised crime planned the robbery over a number of months before drafting in support from another group of criminals with experience in train robberies. Central to the plan was information about the amount of money carried on Royal Mail tr...

7th August 1964: Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed by US Congress

On the 7th August 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed by the United States Congress. The joint resolution granted powers to President Lyndon B. Johnson to use military force to assist countries in Southeast Asia facing so-called "communist aggression". Many critics of the war condemned Congress for granting Johnson a “blank cheque” to escalate American military involvement in the Vietnamese conflict. At the time, however, it passed unanimously through the House of Representatives a...

6th August 1945: The USA drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima

On the 6th August 1945, the USA dropped an atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” on the Japanese city of Hiroshima from the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay.  70,000 people were killed instantly, of whom 20,000 were military personnel. Approximately another 70,000 died over the following months due to radiation sickness, burns, and other injuries directly related to the explosion. The Potsdam Declaration issued on the 28th July by the Allies called for the unconditional surrender of Japan. If the governm...

5th August 1962: Nelson Mandela arrested and jailed

On the 5th August 1962, Nelson Mandela was arrested near the South African town of Howick and imprisoned facing charges of inciting workers' strikes and leaving the country without a passport. He wasn’t released for nearly 28 years. Mandela was a leading figure of the anti-apartheid movement and protested peacefully against the racist system. However, having been imprisoned after being found guilty of treason, he adopted more militant tactics on his release and soon became a wanted man. His a...

4th August 221: The death of Lady Zhen of the Three Kingdoms

On 4 August 221 Lady Zhen, the wife of Cao Pi of Wei of the Three Kingdoms, died. This event has been chosen as today’s episode by Eric Dickerson, a long-time friend of HistoryPod who supports the podcast through Patreon. If you enjoy HistoryPod and would like to join Eric and my other valued supporters, you can find out full details at http://www.patreon.com/historypod Lady Zhen’s death is well worthy of featuring in today’s podcast due, in large part, to the way it highlights the difficulti...

3rd August 1492: Christopher Columbus sets sail from Spain

At 8am on the 3rd August 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail from the Spanish port of Palos de la Frontera on the voyage that would take him to the Americas. While Columbus captained the Santa María, Palos natives commonly referred to as the Pinzón brothers captained the Pinta and the Santa Clara which is better known by its nickname the Niña. A third Pinzón brother, was the master of the Pinta. None of the ships belonged to Columbus himself and, despite the voyage officially being supported...

2nd August 1934: Hitler becomes Führer after Hindenburg dies

On the 2nd August 1934, the 86 year old German Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg died of lung cancer and Adolf Hitler became both the Führer and Reich Chancellor of the German People. It effectively merged the offices of both the President and Chancellor into one role, and therefore completed what the Nazis referred to as Gleichschaltung (or "Co-ordination") by establishing Hitler as both Germany's head of state and head of government. Interfering with the post of President was illegal unde...

1st August 1834: Slavery Abolition Act comes in to force

On the 1st August 1834, the Slavery Abolition Act came into force in the United Kingdom, although it had received royal assent a year earlier. The Act outlawed slavery throughout the British Empire, although there were some exceptions such as in areas controlled by the East India Company. Although Parliament had outlawed the slave trade itself in the Slave Trade Act of 1807, that Act only served to stop the creation of new slaves. It did not address the issue of existing slaves working in the...

Announcement of a HistoryPod summer hiatus

Unfortunately family illness has been making it difficult to keep up with the release schedule for HistoryPod. I have therefore taken the difficult decision to not release any new episodes throughout August and instead issue reruns of episodes from previous years that you may have missed. I hope that this will give me time to catch up on podcast production prior to a return to publishing new content in September. The only exception will be a special episode on 4th August which will be brand n...

31st July 1703: English writer Daniel Defoe put in the pillory for seditious libel

The English writer Daniel Defoe was put in the pillory for seditious libel after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet. Defoe had authored a number of political pamphlets by the time he published The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, which satirised the increasing hostility towards religious Dissenters after Queen Anne succeeded to the throne. Also known as nonconformists, the term applied to a range of Protestant denominations that had broken away from the Anglican High church over the...