Dave Does History

In May 1774, Virginia stepped onto the stage of defiance and never looked back. When the House of Burgesses called for fasting and prayer in solidarity with Boston, Governor Lord Dunmore tried to silence them by dissolving the assembly. The Burgesses refused to be silenced. They gathered in the Apollo Room of the Raleigh Tavern, turning a tavern meeting into a spark of revolution. Dave and Bill explore how this act of defiance carr...

In September 1918, the First World War was nearing its end, but no one on the Western Front could be certain of that. The German Army still clung to the Hindenburg Line, a massive belt of fortifications stretching across northern France. At St. Quentin Canal, this line was at its strongest, defended by concrete bunkers, deep wire, and the canal itself, which served as a natural moat. For years, German commanders had called it impre...

When most of us hear the name “Good King Wenceslas,” we think of the Christmas carol that paints him as a benevolent monarch who braved the snow to help a poor man. The truth, however, is far darker and far more fascinating. Wenceslaus I was not a king but a duke of Bohemia, ruling in the early tenth century at a time when the nation stood at a crossroads between Christianity and pagan tradition, between independence and submission...

On September 27, 1941, long before American troops landed on foreign shores, a different kind of weapon was launched in Baltimore. The SS Patrick Henry, the first Liberty ship, slid into the water at the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard as bands played and President Franklin Roosevelt’s words echoed over the radio. It was a plain freighter, built not for beauty but for speed, economy, and purpose. Roosevelt admitted it looked like an u...

On September 26, 1580, the people of Plymouth looked out to sea and saw a battered ship limping into the harbor. Her sails were patched, her timbers worn, and her crew thinned by years of hardship. Yet she carried a story that would change the course of England’s future. This was the Golden Hind, commanded by Francis Drake, and she had just completed a voyage that no Englishman had ever dared attempt.

For nearly three years, Drake a...

On the morning of September 25, 1911, the French battleship Liberté lay quietly at anchor in Toulon harbor. The fleet was already grieving the loss of sailors from a smaller accident aboard the cruiser Gloire, and preparations for their funeral were underway. At first light, there was no reason to expect anything but another routine day. Then smoke began to curl from Liberté’s forward turret, followed by small blasts that sent resc...

When John Marshall became Chief Justice in 1801, the Supreme Court was little more than a formality. It met in cramped quarters beneath the Capitol, ignored by presidents and forgotten by the public. Over the next thirty four years, Marshall would transform that overlooked institution into a powerful branch of government.

Marshall had already lived many lives. He was a soldier in the Revolution, a lawyer in Virginia, a diplomat who ...

In 1943 a strange and daring plot unfolded in Canada, one that sounds like the script of a wartime thriller. Four of Germany’s most celebrated U-boat commanders, including Otto Kretschmer, the infamous “Tonnage King,” were being held at Camp 30 in Bowmanville, Ontario. Behind the fences they hatched an audacious escape plan. They would dig tunnels, slip across Canada, and meet a German submarine waiting on the coast of New Brunswic...

In 1948 Berlin was a city under siege. Not by tanks or artillery, but by hunger. The Soviet Union cut off all roads, rail lines, and canals leading into West Berlin. Over two million people faced starvation, and the world wondered if the Western Allies would abandon them. Instead, the Americans and British launched the Berlin Airlift, a mission that would keep a city alive from the sky.

Pilots flew around the clock, carrying food, f...

On September 21, 1780, Benedict Arnold crossed the line from hero to traitor. Three years earlier he had been the savior of Saratoga, celebrated as the boldest commander in Washington’s army. But pride, debt, and resentment festered. Congress insulted him, creditors hounded him, and his Loyalist wife Peggy Shippen opened a channel to the British.

That night, Arnold met Major John André on the banks of the Hudson. In Joshua Hett Smit...

Five hundred years ago, Ferdinand Magellan embarked on a historic Spanish expedition to find a western sea route to the lucrative Spice Islands. What began as a commercial venture evolved into an epic, three-year ordeal of discovery, hardship, and perseverance. Sailing from Seville in 1519, Magellan’s fleet of five ships crossed uncharted oceans, endured mutinies, starvation, and storms, and made first contact with numerous Indigen...

In September of 1519, five ships waited at Sanlúcar de Barrameda, their masts swaying above the tide. On board were nearly three hundred men. Some hoped for riches, others for redemption, and many had no choice at all. At their head was a man already carrying a limp and a grudge. Ferdinand Magellan had turned his back on Portugal, pledged himself to Spain, and promised King Charles he would find a strait to the Indies.

On the mornin...

The fall of 1777 brought the Revolution to a breaking point. In the dense forests and rolling fields of upstate New York, General John Burgoyne marched south with a British army that looked unstoppable on paper. But the wilderness, angry farmers with rifles, and a swelling Continental force turned his campaign into a slow bleed. At Freeman’s Farm, Daniel Morgan’s sharpshooters picked off British officers one by one, and though Burg...

On the morning of September 18 in the year 96, Emperor Domitian was already on edge. He feared omens, dreaded the noon hour, and trusted fewer and fewer people. What he didn’t know was that the real danger wasn’t in the stars. It was walking toward him in the form of a steward named Stephanus, his arm wrapped in bandages, hiding a dagger.

Domitian sat to read a petition. Stephanus struck. The first blow went to the groin, and the em...

Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben was not born American, yet his influence helped secure American independence. A Prussian soldier trained under Frederick the Great, von Steuben arrived at Valley Forge in 1778 with nothing more than his experience, his determination, and a reputation that was perhaps a bit inflated by Benjamin Franklin’s pen. What he found was an army in rags, disorganized and nearly broken. What he gave them was struc...

In this episode of Dave Does History, we turn to the third grievance of the Declaration of Independence, a charge that strikes at the very heart of liberty. Representation was not an abstract principle for the colonists. It was the difference between living as free men or being reduced to subjects of arbitrary power. From the seeds planted at Runnymede with Magna Carta to William Molyneux’s warning from Ireland, from Patrick Henry’...

A Venetian teenager leaves home with two older relatives and a bag of letters from the Pope. Twenty four years later he comes back with a head full of Asia, a coat lined with jewels, and a story that will rewrite how Europe pictures the world.

We follow Marco Polo from Venice to Xanadu, through deserts that crack underfoot and courts where a wrong word can end you. We will hear how paper money moves an empire, how salt funds armies...

In the autumn of 1862, Robert E. Lee took the war north into Maryland, hoping to shake the Union and win foreign recognition for the Confederacy. What he did not count on was losing his battle plan, wrapped around a set of cigars, and having it fall into George McClellan’s hands. That stroke of luck set the stage for a clash in the mountain passes above the Maryland countryside.

On September 14, the Union Army fought its way through...