Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchDavid Bushnell's Turtle: The 1776 Submarine Attack on HMS Eagle
Episode 12492
When a quiet Georgia doctor and teacher named David Bush died in 1824, his neighbors learned he was really David Bushnell, who had tried to break the…
9 hours ago
Powder Monkeys: The 12-Year-Olds Who Ran Gunpowder in Sea Battles
Episode 12491
On an 18th century wooden warship the greatest danger was its own gunpowder. The bulk of it sat in a reinforced magazine deep below the waterline, wh…
9 hours ago
Lighthouse Engineering: Eddystone Rocks to Soviet Nuclear Beacons
Episode 12490
The first open sea lighthouse went up on the Eddystone Rocks off England in 1696, when Henry Winstanley anchored an octagonal wooden tower with 12 ir…
9 hours ago
Beebe and Barton's Bathysphere: Bolted In for a Half-Mile Descent
Episode 12489
In the late 1920s naturalist William Beebe, working from Nonsuch Island in Bermuda, wanted to study a column of ocean two miles deep, but diving helm…
9 hours ago
Boaty McBoatface: The Joke-Named Sub That Changed Climate Models
Episode 12488
In spring 2016 the UK's Natural Environment Research Council opened an online poll to name its new 200 million pound polar research ship, then being …
9 hours ago
America's Cup: A Bottomless 1848 Ewer, a 132-Year Streak, and Foils
Episode 12487
The oldest continuous trophy in international sport is a bottomless sterling silver ewer made by Garrard & Co. in London in 1848. Henry William Paget…
9 hours ago
Bartolomeu Dias: The Blind Atlantic Turn That Rounded Southern Africa
Episode 12486
Bartolomeu Dias was born around 1450 into a Portuguese seafaring family: his ancestor Dinis Dias had reached the Cape Verde peninsula in the 1440s. R…
9 hours ago
Auguste Piccard: Sealed Spheres from the Stratosphere to the Abyss
Episode 12485
Auguste Piccard, born in Basel, Switzerland in 1884 alongside his twin brother Jean-Félix, studied at the ETH in Zurich, became a physics professor a…
9 hours ago
Vendée Globe: Surviving Alone, Nonstop, and Unassisted Around Antarctica
Episode 12484
The Vendée Globe is a solo, nonstop, unassisted race around the world over roughly 44,000 kilometers, about 24,000 nautical miles. It was created as …
9 hours ago
Abel Tasman's 1642 Voyage: First Sight of New Zealand, Then Benched
Episode 12483
Abel Tasman gave his name to a sea, an island state, a national park, a glacier, and a bridge, yet his employer judged his career a failure. Born aro…
9 hours ago