History Shorts

In the early hours of August 15, 1945, Japanese officers stormed the Imperial Palace.
Their target wasn't the emperor.
It was a phonograph record.
Recorded on August 14, it contained Emperor Hirohito's announcement accepting surrender. The conspirators sealed the palace, cut communications, killed the commander of the Imperial Guard, and spent hours desperately searching for the recording.
They never found it.
Hidden among palace documents, the record survived. The coup collapsed at dawn, and at noon, millions of Japanese citizens heard their emperor's voice for the first time, announcing that the war was ending.
In this episode of History Shorts, we tell the incredible story of the Kyūjō Incident—the last-minute attempt to prevent Japan's surrender and continue World War II.
It's one of the eight remarkable days told in my new book, Eight Days in August: The Final Week of World War II, out now from Stackpole Books.
 
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In the 1920s, members of the Osage Nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world, thanks to oil discovered beneath their Oklahoma reservation.
Then they began dying.
Osage men and women were poisoned, shot, and killed in mysterious circumstances. Behind many of the deaths was a calculated conspiracy: murder Osage people, inherit their valuable oil headrights, and steal their fortunes.
Local authorities repeatedly failed to stop it. Eventually, federal investigators arrived, and the case became one of the most important early investigations of what would become the FBI.
But the murders uncovered were only part of the story.
 
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On May 18, 1927, the small farming community of Bath, Michigan, suffered the deadliest school attack in American history.
Explosives secretly planted beneath the local school detonated shortly after classes began, collapsing an entire section of the building. As parents, teachers, and neighbors desperately searched the rubble for survivors, another explosion struck nearby.
By the end of the day, 38 children and six adults had been killed, with dozens more injured.
The attack shocked the nation, yet the Bath School disaster has largely faded from American memory.
 
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Dr. Christopher Warren, Vice President of Curatorial Affairs and Chief Curator at the National WWI Museum and Memorial, joins History Shorts for a full conversation about the Great War, memory, and why World War I still matters.
The National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City is America's official museum and memorial dedicated to the First World War. Visitors enter across a glass bridge over 9,000 poppies—each representing 1,000 combatant deaths—before encountering one of the world's most important collections of objects, documents, and personal stories from 1914 to 1918 and beyond.
In this interview, Warren discusses the American experience in World War I, the global nature of the conflict, how Kansas City came to build the Liberty Memorial so quickly after the Armistice, and why the war is still too often forgotten in the United States. We also talk about commemoration, the work of a curator, and what a first-time visitor should take away from the museum.
 
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In 1921, thousands of armed coal miners marched through the mountains of West Virginia.
Many wore red bandanas around their necks—one historical association behind the term "redneck."
Their destination was Blair Mountain, where company-backed forces waited. What followed became the largest armed labor uprising in American history. For days, miners and defenders exchanged gunfire across the mountains while private aircraft dropped bombs. Eventually, federal troops arrived, and the miners surrendered rather than fight U.S. soldiers.
 
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