August 17, 1858. New York City wakes to a hundred-gun salute. Church bells ring, flags fly from public buildings, and by nightfall, fireworks light up the sky. The city is celebrating a telegram from Queen Victoria to President Buchanan. Not what it says, but how it traveled: along a 2,000-mile cable running under the Atlantic Ocean. Messages that once took two weeks by steamship now arrive in an instant. And the man behind the cable, a retired paper tycoon named Cyrus Field, is about to become the most famous person in America. But Field has a secret. His cable is already failing.

Why did a bored millionaire attempt the moonshot of the Victorian era? And how did one fragile wire lay the foundation for our connected world?

Special thanks to our guest, James M. Tabor, author of Lightning Beneath the Sea: The Race to Wire the World at the Dawn of the Information Age.

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August 10, 1792. At midnight, a single church bell begins to ring in Paris. Then another. And another. It's not a call to mass… it's a call to arms. For three years, King Louis XVI and his family have been living as prisoners in a palace, under virtual house arrest at the Tuileries, while France fights over one seething question: can the monarchy survive the Revolution? The radicals have issued a deadline: get rid of the king by the end of August 9th, or we'll take matters into our own hands. The deadline has just passed.

Today, midnight for the monarchy. How did France, whose kings were once anointed with holy oil and believed to cure disease by touch, come to loathe Louis XVI so much? And how does centuries of royal rule come crashing down in a single day?

Special thanks to our guests: David Andress, professor of modern history at the University of Portsmouth and author of The Terror: Civil War in the French Revolution; and Marisa Linton, professor of history turned prize-winning novelist. She's the author of Choosing Terror: Virtue, Friendship, and Authenticity in the French Revolution, and her latest novel, Domain of Darkness, will be published this December.

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August 7, 1889. In Liverpool's St. George's Hall, an American woman named Florence Maybrick stands behind iron bars, dressed in mourning black… for the husband she's accused of murdering. The evidence against her is thin: James Maybrick was a longtime arsenic addict who bought the poison daily, and none was found in his stomach when he died. But Florence had committed another kind of crime in the eyes of Victorian society. She'd had an affair. And to many, that moral transgression was proof enough of murder.

How did a 17-year-old American socialite end up married to a secret addict, and then put on trial for her life? How did her case ignite protests, half a million petition signatures, and the fury of Queen Victoria herself? And how did one wronged woman help change England's system of justice forever?

Special thanks to our guest, Rick Hutto, attorney and author of A Poisoned Life: Florence Chandler Maybrick, the First American Woman Sentenced to Death in England; and to Andrea Hastings-Arroyo, graduate student and library specialist at the University of Wyoming, who helped with our research.

You can find all the books we’ve used to make recent HISTORY This Week episodes at historythisweekpodcast.com.

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Listen to all 20 episodes of World War II with Tom Hanks wherever you get your podcasts!

The war is over, and the Allies are triumphant. The United States and the Soviet Union initially work together to establish a new world order, but over the course of the next four years these two nations will go from Allies of convenience to ideological adversaries, launching the next phase of global conflict under the shadow of nuclear war.

This episode features interviews with (in order of appearance):

• Michel Paradis, professor, Columbia University
• Jon Meacham, presidential historian
• Simon Sebag Montefiore, historian and author
• Timothy Naftali, senior research scholar, Columbia University
• Sarada Peri, presidential speechwriter and political analyst
• Phillips O’Brien, professor, University of St. Andrews
• Alexandra Richie, professor, Collegium Civitas
• Dan Carlin, podcaster, Hardcore History
• Michael Kimmage, professor, Catholic University of America
• Michael Neiberg, professor, US Army War College
• Dan Snow, historian and broadcaster
• A.J. Baime, journalist and author
• Robert Citino, senior historian, National WWII Museum

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.