In this three part series we look at the eight recipients of the Victoria Cross who forfeited the award due to their later actions as well as other recipients who fell on hard times, and with particular reference to the case of modern Victoria Cross for Australian recipient Ben-Roberts Smith, accused of murder and war crimes in Afghanistan. Dur: 27…

Yet another war believed to be over by Christmas. The Second Boer War was fought between the greatest empire the world had ever seen and a nation of farmers with a population fewer than that of Brighton, England. It took the might of the British Empire three years to subdue these farmers who were known as Boers. Dur: 37mins File: .mp3…

Modern historical scholarship has little lenience for hyperbole and any event that appears exaggerated is heavily scrutinized. The Spanish Conquest of Mexico provides ample folklores for historians to examine. One tale depicts renowned conquistador Pedro de Alvarado vaulting across a canal to escape certain doom. An episode since identified as the …

In late October 2024, under a Vienna sports field (Ostbahn-XI-Platz) on the Danube in the Simmering district, a site of ancient mass burial was discovered. 129 bodies were discovered (intermixed bones may mean there were up to 150 bodies buried), all male, mostly between 20 and 30 years old, all roughly 1.7 metres tall, and many with wounds consist…

The French infantry passed by the farm at La Haye Saint and advanced up to the ridge where Picton's 5th Brigade were literally lying in wait. Dutch skirmishers retreated back to their parent regiments in Allied lines. The British troops of Picton's 5th Brigade were stationed 100 yards behind the Dutch who were now trading volleys with the ever-adva…

The Congress of Vienna began in November 1814 and its aim was to provide a plan for a long-term peace within Europe after nearly 23 years of constant conflict and to redraw territorial boundaries so no single nation could become too powerful. Dur: 28 mins File: .mp3

"American Indian Wars" in the modern perspective focuses mostly on the American West in the second half of the 19th century with cowboys, Custer and the calvary, but the worst defeat of an American Army in the Indian Wars happened over eighty years earlier when George Washington was president. Dur: 16mins File: .mp3…

Another poem, "Gwaith Argoed Llwyfain", refers to another campaign against the Angles of Bernicia. It also provides remarkable insights. Here, the leader of the Angles is named as Fflamddwyn – perhaps meaning "flamebearer" or "flamboyant one." It may refer to Theodoric of Bernicia (r. ca. 584-591) whose reign coincides with Urien's. The idea that i…

The works of the sixth century AD Brittonic poet and bard, Taliesin, survive in a fourteenth century Welsh manuscript of the Llyuyr Taliessin, The Book of Taliesin. Taliesin is one of the most important figures in Welsh literature, one of the Five British Poets of Renown listed in the ninth century Historia Brittonum. Taliesin himself may have serv…

On 5 March, 1804, a group of 233 convict rebels revolted against their incarceration in the British colony of New South Wales (corresponding to modern Sydney, Australia). They were met by the local garrison, consisting of only 28-30 regulars and a few loyalist militia, at a place some 40km north-west of Sydney soon dubbed Vinegar Hill. Dur: 29mins …

It is the dream of every ancient historian that some new discovery will solve a mystery of the past – some newly discovered fragment of a lost historian which will make everything clear. Such circumstances are very rare, but the Gothic War of Decius is one recent occasion where exactly the new discovery historians dream of took place. Dur: 24mins F…

The battle of Abritus saw the death of two emperors in battle against a foreign enemy – Gaius Messius Quintus Trajanus Decius, usually known as Trajan Decius (r. 249-251) and his son and co-emperor Quintus Herennius Etruscus Messius Decius, known as Herennius Etruscus (r. 251). They lost their lives intercepting an invasion of Goths led by their ki…

At the conclusion of the Malayan Emergency in July 1960, plans were put into place to incorporate British North Borneo and Singapore into Greater Malaysia. This idea was met with fierce opposition from President Sukarno of Indonesia and in 1962 Indonesia began supporting revolutionary factions on the large, dense jungle island of Borneo. Dur: 18min…

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersThe February 17th, 1950 episode of Broadway is My Beat took Danny Clover to Greenwich Village. By the early 1950s, the sound effects men working in radio had begun to refine their craft to a fine art. In September of 1987 Jack Kruschen and Shirley Mitchell were guests of Jim Bohannon …

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersThe February 10th, 1950 episode of Broadway Is My Beat took Danny Clover to the wrestling matches in search of a missing woman. At that time New York City’s top wrestling promoter was Roderick James "Jess" McMahon. The patriarch of the McMahon wrestling family, Jess McMahon spent seve…

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersAs Broadway Is My Beat was taking to the air on February 3rd, 1950, snow was on the ground. Three inches had fallen on the 1st.That Friday, nuclear physicist Klaus Fuchs was arrested by agents of Scotland Yard. He was charged with providing American atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet U…

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersIn November of 1949 Broadway is My Beat returned to the air on Saturday evenings. It remained there until late January of 1950. The show couldn’t find national sponsorship, though companies like Ford were buying single episode sponsorship to promote their products. Beginning with the …

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersNetwork radio opened 1949 fresh off its fourteenth consecutive year of record earnings. Total network revenue exceeded Two-hundred-ten million dollars.Broadway Is My Beat first took to the air over CBS from New York on February 27th, 1949, It starred Anthony Ross and was directed by J…

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersWell we’ve reached the end of our look at Yours Truly Johnny Dollar and New York City in January of 1956. It would be impossible to tell a complete story on either subject within one episode. For more info on the history of Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, please tune into Breaking Walls ep…

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersDespite a loyal audience, by January of 1956 it was clear that Yours Truly Johnny Dollar was failing to attract any kind of national sponsorship. The road to would have been difficult. Airing at 8:15PM weeknights on CBS radio, it was up against CBS’s own TV schedule, with Burns and Al…

For the battle of Chaeronea, we get none of the detailed deployment which we get for the subsequent battles of Alexander in sources such as Arrian, Plutarch, Curtius Rufus, and even in Diodorus himself. We can use those later deployments to our advantage, however, as Macedonian deployment remained remarkably similar - and, having learned so many le…

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersLawrence Dobkin played several roles in “The Todd Matter,” including Bill Powers. He was a longtime member of AFRA.Roberta Bailey-Goodwin remembered many of the actors that appeared with her father on Johnny Dollar.Although not in this particular Dollar episode, Virginia Gregg was an …

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersProduction was done for these serial episodes of Yours Truly Johnny Dollar in a single day. Bob Bailey was paid three-hundred-dollars per week. Adjusted for inflation, a single week’s work on Dollar paid a little less than thirty-five-hundred dollars.Between October of 1955 and Novemb…

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersIt’s 6PM on Wednesday, January 11th, 1956. I’m at Colbee’s Restaurant on the ground floor of the CBS headquarters at 485 Madison Avenue. I’m about to have a bite to eat with the man you just heard, Mandel Kramer. Yesterday at Edwards Air Force Base in California, U.S. Air Force First …

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersThe man you just heard is Hans Conried. Famous for both his dramatic and comedic portrayals on both radio and TV, By January of 1956 he’d been involved in radio for two decades. Here he is on the February 24th, 1956 episode of Yours Truly Johnny Dollar.By early 1956, those still invol…

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersThe weather on Monday January 9th, 1956 warmed throughout the day. It hit forty degrees Fahrenheit by nightfall. The front cover of The New York Daily News featured a photo of patrolman Ray Cusack, who rescued many children from a fire in Hempstead, New York. Dwight Eisenhower was sti…

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersIt’s a little after midnight on the morning of Monday January 9th. We’re at P.J. Clarke’s on the corner of 55th street and 3rd avenue, getting warm the best way we know how. The weather is nasty outside. It’s about fifteen degrees with freezing rain and gale force winds. Clarke’s is a…

Australia's involvement and commitment to the Vietnam War continued until 1973 when the last remaining platoon who were acting as guards for the Australian Embassy in Saigon, were withdrawn in June 1973. As with American involvement, Australia's contribution also escalated over time. Following the arrival of the AATTV in 1962, in August 1964 the Ro…

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersIt’s a cold, rainy Sunday evening on January 8th, 1956. We’re heading south on Riverside Drive in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. On the air is NBC’s Monitor with a New World Today discussion about the differences in American life in the past twenty years. The United States is changing. …

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersAt a CBS radio meeting in September 1955 at 485 Madison Avenue, John Karole VP of Sales, predicted CBS’s time sold would be more than the other three networks combined. Radio affiliates were given a Segmented Selling Plan. The plan offered a five-minute segment for twenty-one hundred …

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersOn the Sunday, December 31st, 1944 episode of The Jack Benny Program, it’s New Year’s Eve and Jack resolves to be friends with Fred Allen in 1945.For more information on Jack Benny in 1944, including how and why he changed sponsors, please tune into Breaking Walls Episode 151 which co…

Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War began in 1962. In July that year, the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV) (or 'the Team') first arrived, consisting of thirty military advisers. These special teams were designed to train and advise local troops - ARVN units, Montagnards, territorial forces, and Mobile Strike (Mike) Forces. Dur: …

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersAt 9PM on Monday, December 25th, 1944, The Whistler, broadcast from KNX, went on the air over CBS’ regional West Coast Network.The Whistler’s narration acted as a modern version of the Greek chorus, omnisciently taunting the characters. The narrator proved so popular that it was adapt…

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakersThe General Mills sponsored Lone Ranger from WXYZ in Detroit first began airing on January 31st, 1933. The next year it became one of the cornerstone programs which led to the formation of the Mutual Broadcasting System. The show moved to the Blue Network in 1942 and would remain on t…