History Shorts

In the early 1940s, the zoot suit — high-waisted, wide-shouldered, and impossible to miss — was a badge of pride for many young Mexican American, Black, and Filipino Americans. In June 1943, it made them targets. For about a week, mobs of sailors, soldiers, and Marines attacked young men across Los Angeles while police arrested the victims and newspapers cheered. In this episode, we explore the wartime rationing, the Sleepy Lagoon trial, and the press coverage that set the stage for the Zoot Suit Riots — and how long it took Los Angeles to admit what really happened.
🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted by historian and author of Eight Days in August, Peter Zablocki. New episodes every day.
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In August 1864, Abraham Lincoln was so sure he would lose re-election that he wrote it down, sealed the note, and had his cabinet sign it without reading it. In this episode, we follow how the battles of the Civil War shaped Lincoln's biggest political decisions — from the shock of Bull Run, to the bloodshed at Antietam that made the Emancipation Proclamation possible, to the turning point of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and the fall of Atlanta that rescued his presidency. And we find out what Lincoln did with that sealed envelope after the votes were counted.
🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted by historian and author of Eight Days in August, Peter Zablocki. New episodes every day.
⭐ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/history-shorts/id1717345209?action=write-review
🎵 Follow on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4CnKo8pKZNR63aMyNuRz4D
☕ Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/HistoryShortsPodcast
▶️ Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@HistoryShortsPodcast

On July 30, 1975, Jimmy Hoffa waited in the parking lot of a restaurant outside Detroit for a meeting with two mobsters. They never showed. He called his wife from a pay phone — and was never seen again. In this episode, we trace Hoffa's rise from Detroit warehouse worker to the most powerful labor leader in America, his feud with Robert Kennedy, his prison sentence and Nixon's commutation, and his doomed attempt to take back the Teamsters. Then we look at the evidence, the theories, and the fifty years of digging that have never turned up a body.
🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted by historian and author of Eight Days in August, Peter Zablocki. New episodes every day.
⭐ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/history-shorts/id1717345209?action=write-review
🎵 Follow on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4CnKo8pKZNR63aMyNuRz4D
☕ Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/HistoryShortsPodcast
▶️ Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@HistoryShortsPodcast

In 1984, a schoolteacher in the English village of Dodleston borrowed a BBC Micro computer from work and took it home. Then messages began appearing on it that nobody in the house had written. Most came from a man named Tomas Harden, who claimed to live in the same cottage in the 1540s, under Henry VIII. Then a group calling itself "2109" joined the conversation. In this episode, we look at one of the strangest paranormal stories of the computer age — and test it against the historical record, from Oxford college archives to the way people really spoke in Tudor England.
🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted by historian and author of Eight Days in August, Peter Zablocki. New episodes every day.
⭐ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/history-shorts/id1717345209?action=write-review
🎵 Follow on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4CnKo8pKZNR63aMyNuRz4D
☕ Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/HistoryShortsPodcast
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Sometime in the sixth century, according to legend, an Irish abbot named Brendan set out into the Atlantic in a boat of ox hides, searching for the Promised Land of the Saints. The story of his seven-year voyage — with a whale mistaken for an island, a pillar of crystal, and an island that hurled fire — became a medieval bestseller and put Saint Brendan's Island on European maps for centuries. In this episode, we separate the man from the legend, look at the evidence that Irish monks really did reach Iceland, and follow the explorer who sailed a leather boat to Newfoundland in 1977.
🎙️ History Shorts is a daily history podcast hosted by historian and author of Eight Days in August, Peter Zablocki. New episodes every day.
⭐ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/history-shorts/id1717345209?action=write-review
🎵 Follow on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4CnKo8pKZNR63aMyNuRz4D
☕ Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/HistoryShortsPodcast
▶️ Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@HistoryShortsPodcast