Touring History 7-28-25

TOURING HISTORY - JULY 28TH SCRIPT

COLD OPEN

LANE: Welcome back to Touring History, where we dig up the past so you don't have to explain why you know random historical facts at dinner parties. I'm Lane.

DAVE: And I'm Dave, still trying to understand how people survived before air conditioning. Like, did they just accept that summer meant being constantly miserable?

LANE: Today we're exploring July 28th, a date that's brought us world wars, architectural marvels, and some deeply personal scandals that changed the course of history.

DAVE: Speaking of July 28th, we got a voice memo from a listener. Sezso, what do you have for us?

LISTENER VOICE MEMO

SEZSO (as listener): [Nostalgic, warm voice] Hey Lane and Dave! July 28th, 2003, was the day I got my first job out of college - working at a tiny local newspaper in Ohio. I thought I'd be there for maybe a year before moving to somewhere "important." Twenty-one years later, I'm still here, now as editor-in-chief, married to my former sports reporter, and we've covered everything from high school football to a presidential campaign stop. Turns out "important" was right here all along. Sometimes the best adventures happen when you're not looking for them!

LANE: That's really lovely. Small-town journalism keeping democracy alive one high school football game at a time.

DAVE: And marrying your coworker! That's either the best office romance ever or a really effective way to never escape work talk at home.

CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

LANE: Let's celebrate some July 28th birthdays! We've got Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, born in 1929, who redefined what it meant to be First Lady and somehow made pink Chanel suits iconic even after tragedy.

DAVE: Also born today: Beatrix Potter, who gave us Peter Rabbit and proved that stories about badly behaved woodland creatures could make you incredibly wealthy. And Jim Davis, creator of Garfield, continuing the tradition of badly behaved characters making people rich.

LANE: Can't forget Marcel Duchamp, born July 28th, 1887. Artist who basically said "What if I put a urinal in an art gallery?" and somehow changed art forever.

DAVE: Revolutionary concept: calling everyday objects art. Though I'm pretty sure my college dorm room was way ahead of its time by that standard.

SALACIOUS DAVE SEGMENT

DAVE: Time for scandal! July 28th, 1540, King Henry VIII married his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. Now, Henry had a track record with wives, but Catherine's story is particularly scandalous because she was having affairs both before AND during her marriage to the king.

LANE: Oh no. This doesn't end well, does it?

DAVE: Before marrying Henry, teenage Catherine was already sexually involved with her music teacher Henry Manox, then later with Francis Dereham, who actually considered himself engaged to her. But the really juicy part? While married to the king, she started an affair with Thomas Culpeper, a gentleman of the king's privy chamber.

LANE: So she was basically conducting a love triangle while married to one of history's most famously murderous husbands?

DAVE: More like a love pentagon! The scandal broke when a servant revealed love letters between Catherine and Culpeper. One letter included Catherine writing "It makes my heart to die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company."

LANE: That's... actually pretty romantic for someone who was about to be executed for treason.

DAVE: The affair literally changed English succession laws! Henry was so paranoid after this that he passed the Treason Act of 1542, making it illegal for anyone to marry the king without revealing their sexual history. Catherine lost her head in 1542, but her scandalous love life influenced royal marriage law for centuries.

INNOVATION LANE SEGMENT

LANE: Innovation time! July 28th, 1914, World War I officially began when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. But the innovation here was how this war completely changed warfare itself.

DAVE: That's a pretty dark kind of innovation, Lane.

LANE: WWI introduced chemical weapons, tanks, aircraft combat, and modern trench warfare. It was the first truly industrial war where technology determined outcomes more than traditional military tactics. It basically invented modern warfare.

DAVE: So the innovation was "new and more efficient ways to be terrible to each other"?

LANE: Unfortunately, yes. But also July 28th, 1945, a B-25 bomber accidentally crashed into the Empire State Building, leading to major innovations in aviat