HISTORY This Week

Sharing an episode of a show we really love, called The Rest is History. Hosted by historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, the show brings the past to life through gripping storytelling, sharp analysis and a huge sense of drama. From the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the French Revolution and the Norman Conquest of 1066, to the sinking of the Titanic, the Second World War and the lives of history’s most powerful rulers, Tom and Dominic unpack the people, battles and world-changing events that shaped the modern world. Their latest series explores the Founding Fathers of the United States - the ideas, rivalries and revolutions behind the birth of America.
In this episode, Dominic and Tom launch into the extraordinary life and origins of George Washington. Where did George Washington come from, and what was he like? How did he come to take on such a pivotal role in the American Revolution? And, was he really central to America’s triumphant struggle for independence?
You can find more episodes of The Rest Is History at https://linktr.ee/RestIshistory.

Visit htwpod.com for ad-free listening and bonus content!
July 26, 1775. In a stately mansion turned rebel headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, George Washington sits down at a dining room table and writes out his orders for the day. The brand-new commander-in-chief has a problem: his army is outfunded, outmanned, and outgunned — and if he can't communicate, he can't win.
What Washington doesn't know is that on this very day, the Congress in Philadelphia is appointing a different kind of general to help him. A postmaster general: Benjamin Franklin. It's a strange homecoming. Franklin spent forty years building the colonial post into a marvel of efficiency… until the Crown humiliated him before the Privy Council and fired him from the job. Now, the rebels are handing it back.
How did a runaway teenage printer end up running the mail for a continent? Why did the Crown fire its best postmaster? And how did a network of post riders help win the Revolutionary War?
Special thanks to USPS Historian Steve Kochersperger, and Smithsonian National Postal Museum curators Dan Piazza and Lynn Heidelbaugh. Dan and Lynn’s new book for the Postal Museum, Routes to a New Nation, will be out in October and is currently available for pre-order.
You can find all the books we’ve used to make recent HISTORY This Week episodes at historythisweekpodcast.com.
CORRECTION from the episode: Steve Kochersperger was not Postmaster General of Philadelphia, but Postmaster of Julian, PA.
Get in touch: historythisweek@history.com
Follow on Instagram: @historythisweekpodcast
Follow on Facebook: ⁠HISTORY This Week Podcast⁠
To stay updated: http://historythisweekpodcast.com

We have been told the American Revolution was fought over taxation and representation. But that's not what the Declaration of Independence says. According to our founders, in their own words, what they were most upset about was Native Americans. How does a whole country miss a point of its own founding document? That's the question at the heart of a new podcast called First America. Hosted and reported by Rebecca Nagle, an Indigenous author and the former host of Crooked’s This Land podcast, and featuring leading Native historians, First America unveils how our current political moment was 250 years in the making and how the founders’ treatment of Indigenous nations—and their resistance—shaped US democracy. Here’s the first episode. Find First America wherever you get podcasts.

Visit htwpod.com for ad-free listening and bonus content!
July 14, 1850. At a swanky hotel in Apalachicola, Florida, the French consul is throwing a Bastille Day party, and he's promised his guests ice-cold champagne. There's just one problem: the town's ice shipment is delayed, and in 1850, you can't simply make ice. Or can you? Enter Dr. John Gorrie, a country physician who's spent years waging a private war against heat itself, convinced that cooling the air could stop the deadly fevers ravaging his town.
How did a doctor on the Florida frontier invent artificial cooling and take on the "Ice King" of New England? And why has history nearly erased his name?
Special thanks to Bern Nagengast, technology historian and author; and Linda Thompson, docent at the Raney House Museum in Apalachicola, Florida.
You can find all the books we’ve used to make recent HISTORY This Week episodes at historythisweekpodcast.com.

Visit htwpod.com for ad-free listening and bonus content!
July, 1845. Dr. Smith Boughton, the man behind the mask of "Big Thunder," is sitting in a Hudson jail after a trial that ended in a hung jury.
The Anti-Renters had to celebrate Independence Day with cannon fire and readings of the Declaration, but without their leader.
The rebellion across Upstate New York is escalating: an undersheriff with a bully's reputation is terrorizing farm families in the Catskills, masked Calico Indians are massing at rent sales, and before summer's end, a lawman will lie dying in a tenant farmer's bed. New York now has to decide: are these rebels murderers, or is the system they're fighting the real crime?
What happens when the Anti-Renters trade their tin horns for the ballot box? And how does a local revolt over rent end up shaping the politics of a nation?
Special thanks Reeve Huston, emeritus associate professor of history at Duke University and author of Land and Freedom: Rural Society, Popular Protest, and Party Politics in Antebellum New York; Victoria Kupchinetsky and Misha Gutkin, director and producer of the film Calico Rebellion; David Fleming, the town supervisor of Nassau, NY; Nancy Newman, professor at SUNY Albany and author of the book Songs and Sounds of the Anti-Rent Movement in Upstate New York; and the Association of Public Historians of New York State.
You can find all the books we’ve used to make recent HISTORY This Week episodes at historythisweekpodcast.com.