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16 remarkable moments in the history of the Oscars
When was the first Academy Awards? How many Oscars did Titanic win in 1998? Why did Will Smith slap Chris Rock? Here's everything you needed to know about the history of the most notable event in the film industry calendar...
The Academy Awards were first held in 1929, and each year the film industry awards gold-plated statuettes – commonly called Oscars – in a glittering and star-studded ceremony. Officially the Academy Award of Merit, everyone knows the golden knight holding a sword and standing on a reel of film as Oscar. Cedric Gibbons, art director at movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, gets the credit for designing the statuette but not for naming it. Read more | The best historical movies of all time There are three theories. Hollywood journalist Sidney Skolsky always maintained he thought it up as a less-grandiose antidote to the pretentiousness of the award ceremony. Meanwhile, actor Bette Davis claimed she once remarked the statuette’s backside resembled that of her husband, Harmon Oscar Nelson. The most likely winner, however, is Margaret Herrick, a librarian at the Academy, who said the knight (not just his rear) looked like her uncle Oscar. But how much do you really know about the history of the awards themselves, and the dramatic moments that have played out on the biggest night of the Hollywood calendar? The history of the Oscars: 16 key moments 1929: The first ceremony takes place Founded by Louis B Mayer, head of MGM studios, in 1927, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was intended as a non-profit organisation with the goal of advancing the film industry. The first Academy Award ceremony took place two years later at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, on 16 May 1929. Tickets for the private dinner cost $5 and the presentation ceremony hosted by Douglas Fairbanks (actor and first president of the Academy) lasted just 15 minutes. The film industry was undergoing a dramatic change at the time, with the revolutionary introduction of new sound technology. Although hugely popular ‘talkies’ such as The Jazz Singer (1927) had been released before the first Academy Awards, they were not considered, because it was seen as unfair to compare them to silent movies. Read more | Stars, scandals and the end of silent films The first-ever Academy Award was bestowed upon Emil Jannings, for Best Actor for his leading roles in silent films The Way of All Flesh (1927) and The Last Command (1928). The first-ever Academy Award for Best Picture went to Wings, a 1927 silent movie that told the story of two pilots in love with the same woman. The film cost $2 million to produce, making it the most expensive movie of its time. Up until the release of The Artist in 2011, Wings was the only silent film to win Best Picture. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-2225661880-bbfceb9-e1773593014852.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A large banquet hall filled with formally dressed guests seated at long tables during the 1929 Academy Awards dinner at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel." title="Guests seated at the first Academy Awards banquet, held at the Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood, on 16 May 1929. The actual presentation ceremony lasted a mere 15 minutes (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 1934: The wrong Frank gets up on stage Arguably one of the most awkward Academy Awards moments happened in 1934, when both Frank Lloyd and Frank Capra were nominated in the Best Director category. Caught up in the excitement of the ceremony, Frank Capra heard Will Rogers, who presented the award, exclaim “Come on up and get it, Frank!” He duly ran up to the stage to claim his award, only to find that it was in fact Frank Lloyd who had won. Capra called the journey back to his chair “the longest, saddest, most shattering walk in my life”, saying “I wished I could have crawled under the rug like a miserable worm. When I slumped in my chair I felt like one. All my friends at the table were crying”. However, Capra’s humiliation didn’t last long: he won the Best Director gong the following year for It Happened One Night (1934). 1938: An imposter nabs an Academy Award The Best Supporting Actress Award of 1938 went to Alice Brady for her role in In Old Chicago (1937). However, she was too ill to attend the ceremony. When her award was announced an unknown man took to the stage to collect it, apparently on her behalf. Before anyone realised something was wrong, the man had vanished. The mystery of the imposter’s identity – and what happened to Brady’s stolen statuette – was never solved. Statuettes vanished again in 2000, when crates containing 55 Oscars disappeared from a loading bay. Some 52 of the statuettes were recovered soon after, found by citizen Willie Fulgear, who was rummaging in a bin behind a food store in LA’s Koreatown. According to The New York Times he was looking for boxes to use for an upcoming house move. Astonished by his unexpected discovery, Fulgear told reporters: “I’ve got more Oscars than any of the movie stars”. Investigators believed that the culprits took the Oscars by accident, unaware of the crates’ contents. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-1247583035-7b2e403-e1773592915263.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A middle-aged man in a hat stands beside a large skip filled with discarded Oscars campaign leaflets and packaging in a Los Angeles car park." title="Willie Fulgear stands next to the dumpster where he uncovered 55 stolen Oscars statuettes in March 2000. A truck driver was later sentenced to six months in prison for the theft (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 1939: George Bernard Shaw becomes the first person to win an Oscar and a Nobel Prize After winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, Shaw received an Academy Award for adapting his 1913 stage play Pygmalion into a film script. He didn’t attend the ceremony, however, reportedly saying: “They might as well send some honour to George for being king of England.” 1940: Results are leaked ahead of the ceremony At the first Academy Awards in 1929, the winners had been announced to the public three months previously. However, the following year the Academy decided to create a sense of suspense and instead sent an advanced list of award winners to newspapers, embargoed for publication until 11pm on the night of the Oscars ceremony. Read more | Knights! Camera! Action! Hollywood's obsession with the medieval era This system remained in place for the next 10 years. However, in 1940 the Los Angeles Times broke the embargo and announced the winners in their evening edition, meaning that nominees could find out their fate before turning up at the ceremony. As a result of this fiasco, the following year (1941) the sealed envelope system was introduced and the results became a closely guarded secret. 1940: Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African-American Oscar winner McDaniel made history in 1940 by winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, for her role as ‘Mammy’ in the 1939 Civil War epic Gone With the Wind. However, in the year that McDaniel won, the Oscars ceremony was due to take place in a hotel that upheld a strict racial segregation policy. Film producer David O Selznick reportedly had to call in favours just to have McDaniel allowed into the building. Despite being the recipient of a major award, McDaniel had to sit at the back of the auditorium on a segregated table away from the rest of her co-stars. McDaniel was also banned from attending Gone With the Wind’s Atlanta premiere because of segregation laws. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-3248364-8f93e1c-e1773592849432.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara grips a curtain while Mammy, played by Hattie McDaniel, tightens the laces of her corset in Gone with the Wind." title="Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) clutches a bedpost as Mammy (Hattie McDaniel) tightens her corset in Gone with the Wind (1939). McDaniel later became the first African-American actor to win an Academy Award for her role in the film (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 1943–45: Oscar statuettes are made of painted plaster The Oscars statuette, which depicts a knight with a crusader’s sword standing on a reel of film, was designed by MGM’s chief art director Cedric Gibbons in 1929. In the early ceremonies the gongs were made from gold-plated solid bronze, which was later substituted for the pewter-like alloy Britannia metal. However, as the Second World War raged, metal shortages meant that the awards had to be made from alternative materials. Consequently, all awards handed out between 1943 and 1945 were made of painted plaster. When the war was over, all recipients of plaster awards were invited to exchange them for metal ones. 1945: The first Academy Award comes in handy during the Second World War Emil Jannings, winner of the first-ever Academy Award for his performances in silent films The Way of All Flesh and The Last Command (see 1929, above), was ruled out from the new Hollywood talkies because of his thick German accent. Jannings therefore returned to Germany, where he became associated with Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda machine, starring in several films promoting Nazism. When the Allies stormed Berlin in 1945, Jannings reportedly carried his Oscar statuette around with him to win over American GIs and to demonstrate his former allegiance to the US. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-3273720-0eb23a9-e1773588040173.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Emil Jannings in military uniform sits between two soldiers in a scene from the silent film The Last Command." title="Emil Jannings (centre) in The Last Command (1928), one of two films that earned him the first Academy Award for Best Actor in 1929. The German star later appeared in Nazi propaganda films and reportedly used his Oscar statuette to convince invading Allied troops of his pro-US sympathies (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 1968: The ceremony is postponed In 1968 the Academy decided to push back the ceremony from 8 April to 10 April following the assassination of Martin Luther King, whose funeral was scheduled for 9 April. In 1981 the ceremony was postponed for 24 hours following an assassination attempt on US president Ronald Reagan, and the 2021 event was also delayed by two months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 1973: Marlon Brando’s Oscar is rejected by Sacheen Littlefeather Marlon Brando famously refused his Best Actor award for his performance in The Godfather (1972) in protest of Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans. He did not attend the ceremony, instead sending Native American activist and actress Sacheen Littlefeather to make a speech in his place. When Littlefeather explained Brando’s actions, the audience was clearly unsure how to react – some people cheered, others booed. A confused Roger Moore, who attempted to present the award, apparently took the statuette home with him after Sacheen Littlefeather refused to accept it. Listen now | Hollywood history: everything you wanted to know Brando was not the first person to have refused an Oscar: in 1936 Dudley Nichols rejected his Best Adapted Screenplay award for The Informer (1935) due to ongoing strike action by the Screen Writers Guild. Later, after receiving a Best Actor nomination for his titular role in Patton in 1971, George C Scott informed the Academy that if he won he intended to refuse the award. Everyone was therefore very surprised to hear him announced as the winner. Goldie Hawn, who presented the award, exclaimed “Oh my god!” when she read the result. Unsurprisingly, Scott did not attend the ceremony, which he reportedly dismissed as a “two-hour meat parade”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-515575596-c4b96e8-e1773587308777.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black-and-white photograph of Sacheen Littlefeather in a dress and feathered hairpiece speaking to presenters Roger Moore in a tuxedo and Liv Ullmann in an embroidered gown." title="Sacheen Littlefeather remonstrates with presenters Roger Moore and Liv Ullmann at the 45th Academy Awards. The actress and activist had declined the Best Actor award on behalf of Marlon Brando, who refused the accolade in protest at Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 1974: Tatum O’Neal becomes the youngest-ever Oscar winner The 10-year-old received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Paper Moon (1973), in which she starred opposite her father, Ryan O’Neal. She accepted her award wearing a mini tuxedo and platform shoes. 1998: Titanic wins 11 Oscars With 14 nominations and 11 wins, the blockbuster epic Titanic (1997) dominated the Academy Awards in 1998. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, it tells the tragic story of the passenger ship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1912. Films with historical settings have long performed well at the Oscars, from 1931’s Best Picture winner All Quiet on the Western Front, through to recent films such as Lincoln (2012), 12 Years a Slave (2013) and Oppenheimer (2024). Other notable historical films that have swept the boards include the 1959 Charlton Heston epic Ben-Hur (11 wins), 1996’s The English Patient (nine wins) and 1939 Civil War drama Gone With the Wind (eight wins). Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Dances with Wolves (1990), Schindler’s List (1993) and Shakespeare in Love (1998) each took home seven awards. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-153184430-f61cc2c-e1773586809929.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="James Cameron in a black tuxedo stands on the Oscars stage with arms raised triumphantly, mouth open in celebration, while holding an Oscar statuette." title="A triumphant James Cameron raises his Oscar aloft after winning the Best Director award for Titanic in 1998. The blockbuster won 10 other accolades that evening, including Best Picture (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 2002: Halle Berry wins Best Actress – and makes history In March 2002, Halle Berry won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the romantic drama Monster’s Ball. The film, in which Berry plays the widow of an executed death row prisoner, was critically acclaimed for its depiction of poverty and racism in the American South, with her emotionally charged performance earning most of the plaudits. But the moment carried wider historical significance, too: Berry became the first African-American woman to win the award. The importance of the achievement was not lost on the Ohio-born star, who tearfully dedicated the award to “every nameless, faceless woman of colour that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened”. But while Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian woman to win the Best Actress award in 2023, Berry remains the only African-American recipient. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-51093737-bfd9528-e1773586577271.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Halle Berry in a burgundy embroidered evening gown raises an Oscar statuette while smiling at the microphone, as a tuxedo-clad Russell Crowe applauds behind her on stage." title="Halle Berry accepts the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Monster's Ball, March 2002. Berry remains the only African-American recipient of the award. (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 2010: Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win Best Director The 82nd Academy Awards saw Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker scooping six gongs, including Best Picture. But arguably the most significant accolade was that awarded to Kathryn Bigelow, who became the first woman to win the Best Director award. There have been two further female recipients since then: Chloé Zhao for Nomadland (2021) and Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog (2022). 2017: La La Land is accidentally named Best Picture instead of Moonlight At the 89th Academy Awards in 2017, romantic musical La La Land and coming-of-age drama Moonlight were in contention for the coveted Best Picture prize, with many commentators suggesting it was a two-horse race between the films. It seemed settled, then, when the ceremony reached its climax and veteran actors Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway – who were presenting the award – opened an envelope apparently revealing that La La Land had been triumphant. The film’s cast and crew, including lead actors Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, made their way on stage to deliver their acceptance speeches and begin the celebrations. Yet it transpired that Beatty had inadvertently been handed the envelope announcing Stone’s earlier Best Actress win, leaving Dunaway to read out the only film title visible on the card: La La Land. The actual Best Picture envelope – which revealed Moonlight as the true winner – was still in the hands of an accountant from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the firm that oversees the Oscars voting process. Once the blunder became apparent, La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz halted the proceedings and held up the correct card showing that Moonlight had indeed won Best Picture, prompting the film’s stars to come forward and accept the accolade instead. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-645759516-31a508a-e1773586283673.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Warren Beatty stands at a microphone on the Oscars stage holding an envelope, while presenters and winners gather around him amid confusion during the 2017 Best Picture announcement." title="Actor Warren Beatty (centre) tells the 90th Academy Awards how an envelope mix-up led to La La Land accidentally being announced as Best Picture winner instead of Moonlight. La La Land still won six prizes at the ceremony, however, including the Best Actress award for Emma Stone (Photo by Getty Images)" /> 2022: Will Smith slaps Chris Rock With the film industry returning to normal following the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, the 94th Academy Awards was always likely to be memorable – though not in the way most people expected. Before presenting the award for Best Documentary Feature, comedian Chris Rock made an unscripted joke about Jada Pinkett Smith, who had shaved her head after being diagnosed with the autoimmune condition alopecia areata. Incensed, Pinkett Smith’s husband, Will Smith, strode onto the stage and slapped Rock across the face, before returning to his seat and shouting, “Keep my wife’s name out of your f******g mouth”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/03/GettyImages-1239559037-bcc5989-e1773586126858.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Chris Rock recoils on the Oscars stage after being struck by Will Smith, who stands beside him in a black tuxedo during the 2022 ceremony." title="Will Smith (right) slaps comedian Chris Rock during the 94th Academy Awards in 2022. The actor and rapper was subsequently banned from all Oscars-related events for 10 years (Photo by Getty Images)" /> The bizarre spectacle prompted speculation that the incident had been staged, but the slap was genuine – and the situation grew more awkward when Smith later returned to accept the award for Best Actor for his role in King Richard. The rapper and former Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star is currently serving a 10-year ban from attending Academy Awards events, due to expire in 2032. This article was first published by HistoryExtra in February 2016
From Stranger Things to communist cars: why we can't resist nostalgia
In our politically unstable modern world, the allure of retreating into memories – sometimes mirages – of bygone eras seems to have grown. Six historians explore how this tendency impacts our historical understanding
“The nostalgia that Stranger Things evokes is complicated” The first thing to remind ourselves is that our view of the past is definitely shaped. The way that we understand history is translated, constructed, created for us in multiple ways – the majority of which have very little to do with the actuality of what happened. We imagine and dream history across culture, making versions of it that comfort us and accord with our world views. Film, television, games, adverts, heritage spaces, novels – they all enable us to inhabit other times, to form our sense of memory, to consume the past. Nostalgia is simply one of the ways that we access these feelings of pastness. It is incredibly powerful because of its appeal to emotion beyond rationality. It is a way of connecting with the historical that ignores order and authority – and historians underestimate it at their peril. Nostalgia has become a keynote for contemporary collective memory. Global populist politics are shot through with a dangerous nostalgia for a claimed glory that has been seemingly squandered. This is not new, but it is newly dominant. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/2WX7XXY-CMYK-12a5f8b-e1772530438298.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A poster for the TV show Stranger Things, showing four children on bikes on a long road with a yellow line down the middle. They are all looking towards a red, cloudy sky" title="The hit series Stranger Things is “a confection of an imagined 1980s”, says Jerome De Groot, enjoyed by an audience of whom many have “no memory of the eighties other than a cultural hangover of tropes and clichés” (Image by Alamy)" /> In the television series Mad Men (2007), Don Draper cynically uses the past to sell product, observing: “Nostalgia – it’s delicate, but potent.” Memories of the past can be manipulated. The biggest English-language show worldwide in 2025 was Stranger Things, a confection of an imagined 1980s – Spielberg, Nike, Kate Bush and the Cold War melded to present a version of the decade. Yet the nostalgia that Stranger Things evokes is complicated. Much of the show’s target audience has no memory of the eighties other than a cultural hangover of tropes and clichés. The eighties it recollects is itself rooted in a view of 1950s US small-town life. The nostalgia at work here is culturally performative, sold as an expression of algorithmic power rather than actual choice. No one remembers in a neutral way; everyone’s version of the past is a translation enabled by culture. Nostalgia is delicate, but this fragility is a kind of pure experience – even if it is prone to commodification. Jerome De Groot is professor of literature and culture at Manchester University, and author of Double Helix History (Routledge, 2022) “Nostalgia is one of history’s greatest promoters” Nostalgia seems to be everywhere – so much so that some people argue there’s something specific about the 21st century that prompts nostalgia. But it has been around, in one form or another, for centuries – and it has profoundly shaped our relationship with the past. The term ‘nostalgia’ was coined by a Swiss physician in the late 17th century. At the time, it was deemed a disease – a kind of pathological homesickness. It wasn’t until the turn of the 20th century that it morphed into its more familiar form: a longing for a bygone time rather than a distant place. Since then, nostalgia has been our constant companion, becoming rife in popular culture, journalism and political commentary in the 20th century. The 1970s has even been dubbed the “second-hand seventies” for that reason. Psychologists have also studied nostalgia’s prevalence, arguing that it’s experienced by pretty much everyone, all of the time. Though some people might be more or less prone to the feeling, nostalgia is a core human experience with distinct evolutionary advantages. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-3259343webready-3771e14-e1772529840639.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph showing a large group of children playing on a roundabout in a playground. Some adults stand to the right, watching over them. Behind them all are some large brick walls and a few high rise buildings" title="Children play on a roundabout in a London housing estate, 1973. Thanks to nostalgia in popular culture and media, that decade has been dubbed the “second-hand seventies”, notes Agnes Arnold-Forster (Image by Getty Images)" /> Broadly, nostalgia can be divided into two types: personal and historical. The first is the nostalgia you feel about your own life; the second is nostalgia for some period in the past that you haven’t yourself experienced or lived through. Read more | Swings and roundabouts: a history of Britain's playgrounds It is the latter that poses the most problems. In political life, it is often lambasted as the emotional driver behind rightwing populist movements. Academic historians also take issue with this brand because it paints a sentimental and often inaccurate portrait of the past, and advocate detached, dispassionate and objective investigation. Yet not only is it impossible to quell nostalgia’s influence, that also shouldn’t be the goal. Nostalgia is one of history’s greatest promoters. And history is not just an academic enterprise. It is a vibrant ecosystem of period dramas, battle re-enactments, museums, documentaries and genealogists. Nostalgia might not be the only thing that draws people to the past – but where would this ecosystem be without its seductive emotional force? Agnes Arnold-Forster is chancellor’s fellow at the University of Edinburgh, and author of Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion (Picador, 2024) “Today, nostalgia speaks in a different idiom, in ALL CAPS and acronyms” Nostalgia, as the old joke goes, isn’t what it used to be. Twenty years ago, the term was popularly associated with the embattled citizens of eastern Europe, who retreated from the shock of market capitalism into a cosy world of Trabants, Lenin statues and the evocative smell of communist-era pickle jars. Appropriately enough, it was the Russian-American scholar Svetlana Boym who came up with the era’s most perceptive analysis of nostalgia. For her, the pull of a “restorative nostalgia” – a longing for a home or homeland that has never existed – was always at play in the nationalist fantasies of the right as much as it also shaped people’s memories of communism. Today, nostalgia speaks in a different idiom, in ALL CAPS and acronyms – MAGA, MEGA, ‘Take Back Control’ – but Boym’s warnings still ring loud and clear. Here, a look at recent history can be helpful. Nostalgia for a fantasy of imagined racial homogeneity is hardly a new force in British politics. Keir Starmer’s unconscious echoing of Enoch Powell’s noxious rhetoric (in 2025 the PM said Britain risked becoming an “island of strangers”, a phrase he later expressed regret for using) highlights how the spirit of Powell is animating contemporary political discourse. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-2233375765webready-490da1a-e1772529952548.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph showing twelve tall lampposts in a line, each with a single England flag on them, blowing in the wind" title="The English flag flies from lampposts in Sheerness, 2025. The way Britons express nostalgia has changed a great deal over the past 20 years, argues Benjamin Jones (Image by Getty Images)" /> In my field, modern British history, a number of analysts have diagnosed ‘imperial nostalgia’ as an underlying cause of the Brexit-era lurch to the far right. I wonder if this is quite right. Though we might accept that some nationalists dream of resurrecting the British empire, most people’s feelings regarding our imperial past are probably messier and less coherent. Cultural theorist Paul Gilroy argued two decades ago that, rather than acknowledging the complexities of empire, the British instead retreated into “postcolonial melancholia”. Imperial pride was expressed just as colonial violence was denied. We need a cure for such morbid symptoms. Migrants – the enslaved, the indentured, the impoverished, more rarely the privileged – made empire and re-made Britain in turn. Clear vision is required to understand this past; rose-tinted lenses will only obscure our view. Benjamin Jones is author of The Working Class in Mid Twentieth-Century England (Manchester UP, 2012) “German Democratic Republic nostalgics are a minority, but a growing one” When Boris Johnson visited socialist East Germany months before reunification in 1990, he was “amazed at how far behind West Germany” it was: a land “of strange little cars with two-stroke engines and fake coffee”. Most East Germans agreed, keen to swap those “strange little” Trabant cars for VWs, and to leave behind the dictatorship and its make-do economy. Today, things are changing. Cars made in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) are seeing a revival. Restored Trabants fetch up to 7,000 Euros – close to the sum paid when new. Though half of owners are over 60, thousands are under 30, born long after the last Trabi left the factory. This fits into a wider trend of GDR nostalgia, or Ostalgie. In 2019 – 30 years after the Berlin Wall fell – a survey found that 10 per cent of East Germans wanted the GDR back. When the newspaper Nordkurier asked the same question recently, it was nearly a quarter. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-1555920290webready-0db3990-e1772530085287.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of several small, colourful cars parked together, in front of a large building with a central circular tower and pointed rooftops" title="Trabant cars in central Leipzig, East Germany in February 1990, shortly before that state’s reunification with West Germany. A resurgence in the brand’s popularity reflects nostalgia for the certainties of communist rule (Image by Getty Images)" /> GDR nostalgics are a minority, but a growing one. Ask them why, and most cite not socialist convictions but a feeling that life was simpler during the Cold War. The present, with its wars, economic uncertainty and rapid technological change, can feel frightening. So the small world of the GDR appears reassuringly predictable, irrespective of the Stasi’s omnipresence. The Trabi embodies this paradox: it’s a tiny, underpowered car but one that anyone can repair and on which families relied for decades. West Germans aren’t free from nostalgia. With the rise of the far right, unstable coalitions and economic pessimism, many reminisce about the postwar era and its political stability and economic miracle. West Germany was no dictatorship but it was staunchly conservative, initially limiting opportunities for women and social mobility. There is no moral equivalence, but Westalgie also views history through a soft filter. Read more | Life in East Germany: the cultural evolution behind the Iron Curtain In our uncertain times, the pull of Cold War nostalgia is seductive. Historians must stay the course of academic rigour and integrity, providing a much-needed lifeline of solid analysis until calmer days return. Katja Hoyer is a historian, journalist and visiting research fellow at King’s College, London. Her forthcoming book is Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe (Allen Lane, May 2026) “The ‘nostalgia’ label is often applied indiscriminately to almost any period film” As Agnes Arnold-Forster concludes in her recent historical work on this “dangerous emotion”, there are “many nostalgias”, not just one, so assessing whether it shapes our view of the past depends on context and specific detail. Of course, we should be concerned by nostalgia’s role as a social and political emotion – the contentious yearning for an idealised ‘lost’ place or past. Its potential for manipulation demands particular scrutiny in relation to histories, collective memory and public understandings of the present as well as the past. These are no idle fears in our present times. When it comes to period films, historical media genres and their audiences, I would question how much nostalgic pleasures and practices really tell us about the public’s relationship with British history. The ‘nostalgia’ label is often applied indiscriminately to almost any period film or media text, regardless of its genre or intentions, and also to audiences. This issue was a core motivation for my 2011 empirical study Heritage Film Audiences. Even the (few) respondents who expressed acute nostalgia were self-reflective on the subject. “We would not really swap our comfortable modern lifestyle for those days,” wrote one. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-1319979896webready-5db6466-e1772530181978.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph showing a person's hands holding an old photo of a woman in a high necked dress holding a small child in a white dress. Behind the photo are several others strewn across a desk and an open laptop with a family tree on it" title="Popular factual television programmes such as Who Do You Think You Are? can act as a bulwark against idealised versions of the past, contends Claire Monk (Image by Getty Images)" /> The first two decades of the 21st century brought an unprecedented new wave of accessible public history, from free digitised resources (such as Old Bailey Online) via the rise of online family history to innovations in history television that engaged audiences with fact-based histories, primary sources and historical methods. The BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?, launched in 2004, has now run for 22 seasons. Channel 4, particularly during the late Hamish Mykura’s tenure, excelled in innovations in primary-source-based historical drama and drama documentary. The series Georgian Underworld (2003) and City of Vice (2008), on the formation of the Bow Street Runners, were notable. However, the future of engaging public-history media for British audiences rests on institutional factors, not least the future of UK public-service broadcasting itself. Claire Monk is professor emerita of film and film culture at De Montfort University “In contemporary politics, nostalgia is playing a powerful role” Nostalgia is neither inherently good nor bad. It helps us connect to the past, remembering friendships, experiences, places. It can help us work through regrets, offering insights that benefit us in the present. But nostalgia can produce sentimentality based on mischaracterisations of how things once were, painting the past in rose-tinted hues that bear little resemblance to historical reality. Either way, it produces very strong emotions. And in contemporary politics, nostalgia is playing a powerful role. We are seeing a surge in far-right nationalism, not least in the UK. Nostalgia feeds into this, weaponising ‘great’ moments in the past. These are taken selectively from British imperial history, evoking, as cultural theorist Stuart Hall puts it, “the fantasy of a late return to the flag, family values, national character, imperial glory and the spirit of Palmerstonian gunboat diplomacy”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-526776478webready-1b1f2a8-e1772530266615.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A 17th‑century coastal scene showing a large group of men, women, and children gathered on a shoreline as they prepare to board ships. Several sailing vessels wait offshore, with small rowboats ferrying passengers to them. People wear cloaks, bonnets, and wide‑brimmed hats typical of the period. Behind them, cliffs rise to a fortified stone building overlooking the harbour. The mood suggests a significant departure or migration" title="A coloured engraving shows Huguenot refugees landing at Dover after toleration of Protestantism ended in France in 1685. Contrary to a populist narrative invoking false nostalgia, “Britain was never a homogeneous nation”, notes Anamik Saha (Image by Getty Images)" /> As Benjamin Jones notes, Paul Gilroy described this turn as “postcolonial melancholia”. The issue is not only how nationalists refabricate moments from history for their own ends, but also how they bind them to strong feelings of nostalgia. Crucially, Gilroy highlighted the racial dimension of this longing for a Britain before postwar immigration from the former colonies, when life was supposedly simpler, more peaceful and more homogeneous. Read more | Catholics vs Huguenots: your guide to the French Wars of Religion Postcolonial melancholia relies on a wilful amnesia about the past. Historians show us that Britain was never a homogeneous nation free from internal conflict. It has experienced waves of immigration over many centuries, following a familiar pattern: immigrants are initially met with fear and distrust before becoming naturally absorbed into British life and identity. Yet this is buried in popular representations of British history. Historical precision now struggles against nationalistic nostalgia that paints Britain’s past in broad, brutal strokes, obscuring important histories for political ends. Good history can salve postcolonial melancholia, helping the nation face and work through the troubled elements of its past. Anamik Saha is professor of race and media at Leeds University, and author of Race, Culture and Media (Sage, 2021) This article was first published in the February 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
Lonely hearts and holiday flings: a brief history of dating
From calling cards and corsets to 'the pill' and the sexual revolution, we have always found inventive ways to find and further love. Nichi Hodgson, author of The Curious History of Dating: From Jane Austen to Tinder, takes us on a whistle-stop tour of courtship through history
When I first began writing about the history of dating, what struck me most was how similar the problems of today are to the 1930s, the 1840s, and even the 1780s. From worrying about a partner’s financial standing, or whether someone was going to stick around long enough for you to have children with them, to persuading your parents they are indeed a good fit, the means by which we go about finding love may have changed, but not the hopes, dreams and anxieties we’ve had about discovering it. In the Georgian era, for example, the advice was clear: looks matter but value them at the peril of your long-term happiness: “She, who, intoxicated with flattery, protracts the triumphs of her beauty in youth, may live to lament the barren spoils of it in age.” Indeed, throughout history, grooming and dressing as well as you possibly can has always been a better strategy than ruminating on what you don’t have. Victorian women wore dresses cut just above the nipples, with pearl necklaces draped lasciviously in their décolletage, while some Edwardian men favoured wearing corsets and delighted in the sensation of tight lacing. When the mini skirt was invented in the early 1960s, some men even tried it out, including 16-year-old trainee brick layer Tony Liggard whom the Daily Mail reported was convinced it would catch on among men. It didn’t – but long hair, floral patterns, make-up and jewellery all eventually did. So much for the myth that male grooming is a recent phenomenon! <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/02/2GettyImages-559574483-24ee5fb-e1770990862524.jpg" width="1499" height="1000" alt="A Victorian advertisement showing black and white sketches of men wearing corsets. Across the top is an address and an advert for Madame Dowding" title="Some Victorian and Edwardian men experimented with wearing corsets, as this 1899 advertisement reveals (Image by Getty Images)" /> Once you were suitably styled, you needed to get a date’s attention. The Georgians were mad for ‘lonely hearts’ adverts, which they would write and post via newspapers including The Times, later in matrimonial gazettes, circulated around London’s coffee houses, while the Victorians settled on the idea of the marriage bureau, an agency designed to match the middle classes, via photos and details about their hobbies. In the 1930s, gay men and women would use the fan columns of movie magazines to drop hints about their sexuality by referencing Hollywood stars such as Bette Davis and Montgomery Clift. Read more | How I uncovered Victoria's secret love: Historian Fern Riddell explains all Chaperones and calling cards In the flesh, of course, the best seduction tool has always been dancing. From Regency square dancing to secret Victorian drag balls, from the 1910s ‘turkey trot’ to the 1980s and 1990s acid house rave scene, the vertical expression of the horizontal desire has rarely failed a trier. As playwright and actor Steven Berkoff reminisces about the Tottenham Royal dance hall in his autobiography Free Association: “You were the dandy, the mover and performer in your own drama, the roving hunter and lover, the actor adopting for the girl the mask of your choice.” But if you couldn’t dance, witty conversation and excellent manners have always served as a good substitute. Meeting a lady on the street in Victorian England was a fraught business. As the etiquette manual Manners for Men put it, you were never to introduce a lady to a gentleman, but always the gentleman to the lady, and must never offer an umbrella to a woman on the street on the basis that “No lady would accept the offer from a stranger, and the other sort of person might never return the umbrella.” WATCH | Fern Riddell's presents her groundbreaking research into one of the most tantalising royal rumours in British history View Green Video on the source website Middle-class Victorians embraced a complicated ritual of giving out calling cards, and of making home visits according to a strict etiquette. However, even if you succeeded getting an audience with your potential amour, you would never be left unattended. Chaperones were in full force until the First World War, when the exodus of Britain’s young men left women to parry and party on their own. Etiquette manuals were swapped for magazine problem pages, and by the 1930s, handbooks on sex were as easily purchased as those on hosting. When we think of the early 20th century, we may imagine courting couples meeting one another on realistic terms, their expectations untroubled by the imagery of dream homes and impossibly honed bodies that haunt contemporary media. However, we’ve always idealised glamour. From the birth of the celebrity-courted gossip column in the 1920s and the boom in cinema from the 1930s, our aspiration to marry the richest and most beautiful has long intruded upon our daily contentment. Today, with living standards so much higher, and the cost of clothes and cosmetics cheaper, it’s actually easier than ever before to replicate celebrity standards of grooming. And while we frequently flagellate ourselves for living in an increasingly narcissistic, selfie-obsessed culture, we aren’t the first generation to be so concerned with the vagaries of appearance. In fact, the Victorians even had their own version of Instagram, exchanging cartes-de-visite – small portrait prints which would be organised into albums also containing images of celebrities and royalty. These albums were exchanged in flirtation but also as a means of asserting one’s social standing. The trick was to guess whether someone showcasing a royal portrait had in fact met the royal in question. Sex before marriage Perhaps the biggest surprise about our dating history is that pre-marital sex has often been the norm for most people. Apart from the revival of a long-practised behaviour called ‘bundling’ – cuddling with clothes on – which was a response to the 1834 Poor Law penalising women who found themselves pregnant as single mothers, it seems our ancestors always found a way to “try the goods before you buy them,” as I remember my grandmother once joking to me. Condoms that could be washed out with carbolic soap were used from the mid-19th century, while contraception campaigner Annie Besant was tried for obscenity for publishing a pamphlet on the topic in 1877. Read more | From goat eyelids to bread: history's 12 strangest sex toys When Marie Stopes published her sex manual Married Love in 1918, it was just as widely read by single girls as married ladies. In her book, Stopes advocated the benefits of conjugal love, and physical pleasure within marriage. “I paid such a terrible price for sex-ignorance,” she says in the preface, “that I feel that knowledge gained at such a cost should be placed at the service of humanity.” In the 1930s, Marjorie Hillis, the author of Live Alone and Like It, recommended that women stay away from affairs before the age of 30 while acknowledging that plenty of single ladies were inviting gentleman callers back to their homes at night, and that societal attitudes were changing: “A woman’s honour is no longer mentioned with bated breath and protected by her father, her brother and the community. It is now her own affair.” Meanwhile, in the 1960s, ‘the pill’ didn’t quite provide the immediate revolution it has been credited with. Originally it was only prescribed to married women, and even in the 1970s, doctors could refuse women a prescription on moral grounds – something my own mother remembers happening when she went, as an engaged woman, to seek it out. What’s more, the downside of women procuring the pill was that men, who had originally assumed responsibility for acquiring condoms, stopped taking as much responsibility for contraception. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/02/4BXPEMP-2d507fc-e1770991054847.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a young woman. She is sitting at a desk, looking at the camera, while bent over a microscope. In front of her is a large glass globe" title="Birth control pioneer Marie Stopes pictured in her laboratory, 1904. Stopes advocated the benefits of “conjugal love and physical pleasure within marriage” (Image by Alamy)" /> Long before apps like Tinder widened the dating pool, developments in travel and technology have been crucial to navigating the course of true love. When the stream train came into everyday use in the mid-19th century, rail travel reached the masses. Women now shared dimly lit, cramped carriages with men, and even if you were venturing to visit a maiden aunt, there was every chance you could enjoy a verbal dalliance or three along the way with people you wouldn’t necessarily ever clap eyes on again. “Surprise visits by moonlight” The bicycle, meanwhile, also improved romantic opportunities. Contrary to the tricycle, which saw women wearing full skirts and accompanied by a chaperone, the two-wheeler required women to get their leg over, and was effectively the first mode of transport that they could use entirely independently of men. Etiquette guides of the period recognised that people could now pay “surprise visits… by moonlight” and that seaside flirtations could be enhanced by romantic bike rides together. While there was fear about exactly what kind of excitations might be invoked by the bike riding, 1897’s Manners for Men advised that men encountering female cyclists “help ladies as much as possible by pushing their machines up the hills for them”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/02/5GettyImages-3292776-48250fa-e1770993875813.jpg" width="1500" height="1912" alt="A black and white photograph a woman in a long coat, wearing a hat. She is sitting on a bicycle with her arms crossed. Behind her, there are some trees and a road" title="A young woman enjoys a ride on a ‘scorcher’, a type of bicycle, c1897. Etiquette guides from the era suggested that courtship could be enhanced by romantic bike rides with your partner (Image by Getty Images)" /> Of course, when circumstances called for it, people have travelled to far-flung lands to find a mate. In the 1930s middle-class women that found themselves ‘left on the shelf’ still travelled to colonial India in search of husbands. Nicknamed ‘the fishing fleet’, these women travelled by boat to colonial outposts along with ambitious young men seeking work. In some cases, they’d often coupled up before the vessel had even docked, or used the voyage as an opportunity to scope out who would be available on dry land. This was encouraged by local Indian churches who did not approve of ‘loose’ women flitting about the provinces. Read more | A timeless love story? Abélard and Héloïse’s passionate affair There was even a tale of one 36-year-old woman named Kitty Irwin who was invited to stay with a married friend in Karachi. During her six months ‘on tour’, she met an exporter called Sam Raschen who became more or less besotted with her at first sight. When she arrived at the booking office to arrange her passage home, she was escorted to see Raschen in his office at the dock and he subsequently persuaded her to delay her return indefinitely and, instead, marry him. In the 1950s, the first package holidays opened up the possibility of a ‘holiday fling’ to the general populace. The 1970s, meanwhile, saw the invention of 18–30s holidays, which began with the same insalubrious reputation that they ended up with. A Sunday Times reporter from the end of the decade wrote: “I spent one night on the beach until 4am waiting for Chas to finish and let me get back to bed. But he did give me 1,000 pesetas to amuse myself with. As for my other room-mate, he was sick in the sink on the second day. Too much sangria. Despite that, he managed five girls in our seven nights there. And one girl, I found out, had tackled an equivalent number of blokes.” Later, the film Shirley Valentine would inspire a flock of similarly inclined women, including female sex tourists who were courted by young Caribbean men called ‘rastitudes’, and men who sought mail-order brides, on a ‘no-try-before-buy’ basis. Today, dating organisations like Inner Circle connect peripatetic singles at events in multiple capital cities. And with advances in digital messaging and virtual reality technology, it’s never been easier to start a relationship across a distance. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/02/62JRHC3E-8ac18b1-e1770994863561.jpg" width="1500" height="1003" alt="A photograph of a couple looking lovingly into each other's eyes. The woman has a pink top on and curly hair. The man is in a dark blue shirt and has a moustache. Behind them is a large beach" title="Pauline Collins and Tom Conti in Shirley Valentine (1989). The award-winning film, based on a Willy Russell play of the same name, inspired women to pursue their own holiday romances (Image by Alamy)" /> Nor has it ever been easier to date according to broader gender preferences, sexual orientation or erotic peccadilloes. Much of that is as a result of the relaxation of some of the laws discriminating against LGBTQI individuals and so-called ‘alternative’ relationships, but also a cultural shift in how we define gender, and who gets to decide what kinds of couplings and throuplings (or more) are permitted. But some of it is the dating industry’s desperate attempt to cast the net ever wider as dating app fatigue sets in and users become cynical of taglines such as ‘Designed to be Deleted’. The future of dating Finding an appealing alternative to dating apps is proving tough; experimental in-person dating events in places like bookshops just don’t yet have the same reach or appeal, and younger users are frequently finding apps such as Snapchat and TikTok a much better way to connect. And if AI is set to pose a bigger shift to how we live since the Industrial Revolution, that includes dating. That could be your AI bot talking to another AI bot to streamline the process of making a partner shortlist for you, but also AI’s increasingly sophisticated ability to dredge the internet for information about specific individuals, collated from a lifetime of social media posts. However, as we've seen throughout history, dating as simply yet another commodification has never stuck – and certainly never managed to fulfil the wild longings of the heart. And while marriage rates flounder, dating as not just entertainment but self-fulfilment has a rose-tinted future. Nichi Hodgson is a journalist and the author of The Curious History of Dating: From Jane Austen to Tinder (Little, Brown, 2017)
Dr Emily Akkermans charts the story of how a small hilltop observatory became the centre of global timekeeping
Why is a small observatory in south-east London so important to the story of how we tell the time? Speaking to Elinor Evans, Emily Akkermans, Curator of Time at the Royal Museums Greenwich, shares the history behind Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). From 17th-century efforts to solve the 'longitude problem' at sea, to the red 'time ball' that still drops at 1pm each day, this episode uncovers how Britain’s maritime ambitions, royal patronage and scientific ingenuity turned Greenwich into the beating heart of global timekeeping.
Think you know everything about the history of Thanksgiving? Here’s 21 facts that will prove you wrong
From tales of pumpkin-pie panics to the story of the president who turned his dinner into a pet, Jonny Wilkes uncovers the surprising history behind Thanksgiving: America’s turkey-tastic holiday
There are only two accounts of the first Thanksgiving The story of the first Thanksgiving has been highly mythologised in American history. In 1621, the so-called Pilgrims who travelled on the Mayflower and formed the settlement of Plymouth, in Massachusetts, came together with the local indigenous peoples, the Wampanoag, for a feast to celebrate a good harvest and the growing friendship of settler and Native American in the New World. That is the version long told in schools. In truth, the Pilgrims threw themselves a harvest festival and around 90 of the Wampanoag showed up. Without their help, especially a man named Squanto, the European settlers would have likely perished in their brutal first winter. The only sources for the three-day feast are sparse mentions in writings by two of the Pilgrims, Edward Winslow and William Bradford. Neither actually used the word ‘thanksgiving’, however, and since they gave few details of what happened, the mythologising took over. They may not have eaten turkey at the first Thanksgiving For many Americans, no modern Thanksgiving meal is complete without a turkey as the centrepiece of the table. It’s unclear, however, whether this tradition began in 1621. The Pilgrims cooked up a selection of fowl – which may have included turkey, but could just as easily been duck and goose – while the Wampanoag killed a number of deer, meaning venison was on the menu. They might have had seafood, too, including eels, clams, mussels and lobster. Yes, William Bradford mentioned a “great store of wild Turkies” in the region, but the bird did not become a staple of the Thanksgiving meal until the 19th century. The first Thanksgiving may have happened earlier than 1621 While the 1621 feast became the foundation for the Thanksgiving holiday, perhaps Americans should celebrate a different year. Other acts of thanksgiving, based in the tradition of Christian harvest festivals, took place earlier in the short-lived Popham Colony in Maine and Jamestown in Virginia, both founded in 1607. Two years before the Pilgrims and Wampanoag, the Berkeley Hundred settlement, also in Virginia, held a celebration and decreed that the same day should be “perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God”. The true first Thanksgiving, however, was not English, but Spanish. On 8 September 1565, in what is now St Augustine, Florida, hundreds of Spaniards held a religious ceremony and shared a meal with the local people to mark their safe arrival. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/3C5BDJ6-54ff763-e1764176698213.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting depicts a large crowd of men kneeling on the ground, holding up spears. In front of them, a priest stands in cream and yellow robes and holds a cross" title="A painting depicts Spanish settlers arriving in what is now the city of St Augustine, Florida, in 1565. Their meal with the local indigenous population has been described as the first true Thanksgiving (Image by Alamy)" /> Americans eat around 46 million turkeys every year A major reason why turkey became the meat of choice for Thanksgiving is that the birds are both abundant and large (meaning a lot of meat), and it’s a good thing, too. There’s a reason the holiday is also referred to as Turkey Day. With apologies to the non-meat eaters out there, it is estimated that around 46 million birds are killed for the holiday every year in the US alone, according to the Department of Agriculture. That’s one turkey for every seven or eight Americans. The fastest time to carve a turkey is under four minutes Without wanting to dismay all the Americans who take immense pride in serving up the meal every Thanksgiving, the Guinness World Record for the fastest time to carve a turkey is currently held by a British person. The UK does eat its fair share of turkeys at Christmas, after all. In 2009, Paul Kelly, a turkey farmer in Essex, managed the feat in just three minutes and 19.47 seconds. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/4GettyImages-530209391-de2c182-e1764176657592.jpg" width="1500" height="1002" alt="An illustration of a colourful turkey. It has a red and blue spotted head, with yellow and dark orange feathers across it's front, and blue wings, with a red and black tail" title="A mid-19th century illustration of a turkey. An apocryphal quote attributed to Founding Father Alexander Hamilton states that no “citizen of the United States should refrain from turkey on Thanksgiving Day” (Image by Getty Images)" /> The author of Mary Had a Little Lamb is known as the ‘Mother of Thanksgiving’ Sarah Josepha Hale was a writer, the first American woman to be editor of a magazine and, in 1830, she published the nursery rhyme, Mary Had a Little Lamb (originally titled Mary's Lamb). One of her biggest passions, though, would always be Thanksgiving. Born in 1788 in New England, she grew up with the local celebrations and customs that took place every year, and wanted Thanksgiving to become a national holiday. For years, she embarked on this campaign, writing editorials for her magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book, which had a peak circulation of 150,000, as well as countless letters to presidents asking for their help. Finally getting somewhere with Abraham Lincoln, she is now heralded as the ‘Mother of Thanksgiving’. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/6GettyImages-3245390-8ee41b9-e1764176761138.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white illustration of a woman sitting in a high backed chair. She is wearing a dark dress with a white lace collar and has ringlets in her hair" title="Sarah Josepha Hale is best known as the ‘Mother of Thanksgiving’ – and for writing a much-loved nursery rhyme (Image by Getty Images)" /> In 1705, a town postponed Thanksgiving because of pumpkin pie Until Sarah Josepha Hale’s campaign, it was up to each town and state to determine how to mark Thanksgiving, with most of the events taking place only in the US northeast. For the people of Colchester, Connecticut, the celebrations must include pumpkin pie. The dessert had become a symbol of the bounty of the New World. In 1705, however, they faced a problem: bad weather prevented supplies from reaching them, including the molasses that they needed to make their pies. Rather than have a Thanksgiving without them, the townsfolk elected to postpone the festivities for a week until the molasses could be delivered. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/7GettyImages-509616436-453ca45-e1764177624580.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of a bright orange pumpkin pie with small dollops of cream on the top of each slice" title="Can you really have Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie? Well, one town in Connecticut decided to postpone their festivities when they were unable to source the correct ingredients in 1705 (Image by Getty Images)" /> Thomas Jefferson was opposed to Thanksgiving (sort of) In 1789, George Washington issued a presidential proclamation naming Thursday 26 November as a “day of public thanksgiving and prayer”. This did not make the holiday official, as each president had to issue their own proclamations every year. While John Adams followed Washington’s example, the third president, Thomas Jefferson, did not. He did not oppose families coming together for a nice meal – in fact, he encouraged it as governor of Virgina – but he felt that the religious significance of Thanksgiving meant the president could not endorse it. Otherwise, he would undermine the separation of church and state as established by the first amendment of the Constitution, which he had helped get written. Benjamin Franklin preferred turkey to bald eagles The bald eagle has been a national emblem since being chosen to adorn the Great Seal of the United States in 1782. However, the decision did not meet the approval of the great polymath and Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin. He thought the bald eagle had “bad moral character”, “generally poor”, “often very lousy” and a “rank coward”, as he wrote in a letter to his daughter. The turkey, on the other hand, was a “much more respectable bird and withal a true, original native of America,” in his opinion. Read more | Benjamin Franklin's greatest inventions Franklin was effusive in his praise, describing the turkey as “though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.” The cornucopia has ancient origins A horn-shaped basket overflowing with the fruits of the harvest, the cornucopia is a symbol of abundance. As such, it has come to be associated with Thanksgiving and is a common feature of the decorations. The origins of the horn of plenty have nothing to do with the Pilgrims or Wampanoag in 1621, or with Sarah Josepha Hale and Lincoln: it goes back much further. According to ancient Greek mythology, the god Zeus was raised by Amalthea, either an enchanted goat or a water nymph with an enchanted goat. Either way, one day the baby deity broke off one of the horns and it began pouring forth fruits, seeds and nuts. To the Romans, however, Hercules created the horn by snapping it off a river god. Thanksgiving became a national holiday during the American Civil War Sarah Josepha Hale tried for years to get Thanksgiving recognised as a national holiday, but it was with the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 that the circumstances finally came together. In 1863, she wrote to President Abraham Lincoln arguing that Thanksgiving could heal the divided and hurting country, and he agreed. Less than a week later, he issued a proclamation declaring a holiday on the last Thursday of November – and so Thanksgiving has been celebrated ever since, with a few exceptions. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/11GettyImages-515449646-0a00406-e1764176933734.jpg" width="1501" height="1002" alt="a black and white photograph of a large group of soldiers standing around a tall man in a long coat and top hat. Behind them is a series of large tents" title="Abraham Lincoln meets Union troops near Sharpsburg, Maryland, in October 1862. A year later, the Civil War president issued a proclamation declaring Thanksgiving to be a national holiday (Image by Getty Images)" /> A small Pacific island has celebrated Thanksgiving since the 1800s Thanksgiving is not celebrated only in the US: Canada marks it in October, while festivities can be seen in countries around the world. A contender for the most unlikely place has to be Norfolk Island, a tiny Australian territory in the Pacific Ocean home to just over 2,000 people. Yes, Thanksgiving comes on a Wednesday, not Thursday, and there are a lot of local dishes alongside the pumpkin pie, but the holiday is firmly rooted in American traditions. It began in the 1800s when American sailors and whalers made regular stops there. One American, Isaac Robinson, settled on Norfolk Island and made a big deal of celebrating Thanksgiving. After he died, the islanders just kept it going. The inaugural Turkey Trot had only six runners Every year on or around Thanksgiving, around a million people put on their running shoes – and maybe a turkey costume – and take part in their local Turkey Trot, one of many races held all over the US. If nothing else, the run will help counter all the calories about to be consumed. The Turkey Trot began in Buffalo, New York, in 1896, on a much smaller scale. Just six runners started the five-mile course, with four finishing. One pulled out after two miles, while another had to stop when his “late breakfast refused to keep in its proper place”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/13GettyImages-1444263993-f9f153a-e1764176982360.jpg" width="1500" height="1002" alt="A photograph of several people running along a road, each with a number pinned to their front. In the front of the image is a man running dressed as a turkey" title="Thousands of Americans attempt to offset their Thanksgiving calorie intake by taking part in a Turkey Trot – such as this annual event in Dana Point, California, photographed in 2022 (Image by Getty Images)" /> The first Macy’s Parade featured live animals, not balloons Another constant of Thanksgiving television is the Macy’s Parade. Best known today for the storeys-high balloons in the shapes of beloved characters, when the department store first planned a parade through the streets of New York in 1924, the main attraction was a bit livelier – literally. They borrowed animals from Central Park Zoo, including elephants, tigers, bears, camels and monkeys. Some 10,000 people attended the Macy’s Christmas Parade, so-called as it launched shopping season for Christmas, preferably at Macy’s at Herald Square, rather than celebrated Thanksgiving. Read more | The history of Christmas, plus 10 festive facts you might not know Snoopy has the most appearances in the Macy’s Parade The famous Macy’s Parade balloons made their debut in 1927, with the honour of the first character going to Felix the Cat. It is a dog, however, who has been flown through the streets of Manhattan on Thanksgiving more than any other. Since 1968, Snoopy, Charlie Brown’s loyal companion from the beloved Peanuts comics by Charles M Schulz, has clocked up more than 40 appearances with eight different balloons. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/152DB0047-3e97b86-e1764177046383.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of a large balloon depicting Snoopy the dog. He is all white with black nose and ears, and has a yellow bird on his head" title="Snoopy has long been a fixture of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, notching up more than 40 appearances. This particular incarnation of the beagle, photographed in 2013, featured his bird friend Woodstock perched on his head (Image by Alamy)" /> Calvin Coolidge was sent a raccoon for his Thanksgiving meal In 1926, President Calvin Coolidge received an unusual present from one of his supporters: a live raccoon, along with a note suggesting that it would make a delicious Thanksgiving meal. Rather than send the animal to the oven, though, Coolidge decided to keep it as a pet. Named Rebecca, she had free rein of the White House and its grounds, and at the end of his presidency Coolidge and his wife, Grace, sent the raccoon into retirement at a zoo in Washington, DC. Read more | 10 famous people in history and their bizarre pets <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/16FFWH1F-8ddae15-e1764177100383.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a woman in a dress and large hat, holding a raccoon in her arms" title="President Calvin Coolidge’s wife, Grace, seen with the couple’s pet raccoon in 1927. The procyonid – which was given the name Rebecca – was originally intended to have been eaten as part of Thanksgiving dinner (Image by Alamy)" /> The Detroit Lions always play Thanksgiving football American football is as much a part of Thanksgiving as turkey, with millions tuning in to the blockbuster matches that afternoon. It’s a big day for the sport, but especially for fans of the Detroit Lions since they play every year. This custom goes back to 1934. When radio executive George Richards bought an Ohio-based team and moved them to Detroit, Michigan, he had the idea to drum up excitement by putting on a game on Thanksgiving, when everyone was off work. It was inspired: the game between the Lions and the champion Chicago Bears sold out, and became an instant annual tradition. In 1966, the Dallas Cowboys got in on the act and now they have their own game too. There were two Thanksgivings in 1939, 1940 and 1941 President Franklin D Roosevelt made a bold decision in 1939 to go against precedent and move Thanksgiving up a week. The issue was that the traditional date for the holiday fell on the last day of November that year, leading retailers to warn FDR about the economic damage a late Thanksgiving would have on Christmas shopping. Not everyone was happy with the date change, dubbed ‘Franksgiving’, with Time magazine even comparing FDR to Adolf Hitler. With many states ignoring it and celebrating on the usual day, the US had two Thanksgivings. Read more | “We analysed Hitler’s DNA – and what we discovered made us gasp” Despite the criticism, the president doubled down and did the same thing the following year. Congress got involved in late 1941, passing a resolution to set the date for Thanksgiving once and for all – but not before that year's festivities had already been impacted too. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/18GettyImages-535083952-ee1697d-e1764177144853.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a smiling couple sitting next to each other at a dining table. The man is carving a turkey while the woman looks on" title="Franklin D Roosevelt carves a turkey during his first Thanksgiving as president, 1933. Six years later, his decision to move the date of the holiday would spark national controversy (Image by Getty Images)" /> The day after Thanksgiving is the busiest day of the year for plumbers Perhaps this should not be all that surprising: with large groups gathering under a single roof to eat a huge meal, clogging up the kitchen drainage and – ahem – bathroom pipes, the pressure on America’s plumbing peaks at Thanksgiving. The day after the celebrations, therefore, proves to be an extremely busy time for plumbers. One national company claims they see a 50 per cent increase in calls from the average Friday. While everyone else is calling it ‘Black Friday’, the plumbers of America have come to refer to it as ‘Brown Friday’. Presidents have the power to pardon turkeys Every Thanksgiving, the president performs one of their stranger duties: the pardon of one or two turkeys. Freed from the dinner table, they are sent for a long life on a farm or petting zoo (or, in some cases, Disneyland). The custom officially began with George HW Bush in 1989, although its roots go back further. When a turkey was sent to the White House for the Thanksgiving meal, JFK, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter all chose to let them live. Ronald Reagan did the same, although he went so far as to use the word “pardon”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/19-WIKIPresidentRonaldReaganreceivesthe40thWhiteHouseThanksgivingTurkey1987-68d3e64-e1764177226575.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A group of people stand around a white turkey as it tries to take flight" title="Ronald Reagan pardons Charlie the turkey in 1987. As well as having to deal with a very flappy bird, the president also had to field questions from the press regarding the Iran-Contra affair" /> The same day also marks the National Day of Mourning For many Americans, Thanksgiving is not a cause for celebration, but a stark reminder of the oppression of the Native American population. The image of the first Thanksgiving – where European settler and indigenous people sat side-by-side in peace – is a myth that glosses over the centuries of brutality and persecution that followed. The last Thursday in November, therefore, is a time of protest. It began in 1970 when Wamsutta Frank James, an elder of the Aquinnah Wampanoag, was refused the chance to give a speech he had written for the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the Mayflower, which spoke of the painful legacy of colonisation and governmental subjugation. Instead, he led a group of protesters in Plymouth and declared the first National Day of Mourning. Today, the United American Indians of New England (UAINE) organise a march and rally to honour their ancestors and educate the public about why Thanksgiving should be about more than giving thanks.
Toilets through time: early modern chamber pots
Professor Mark Stoyle leads David Musgrove into the early modern water closet
David Musgrove and Mark Stoyle tackle the toilets of the early modern period – from Samuel Pepys' graphic garderobe confessions to chamber pots and literary loo paper Samuel Pepys describes in great detail the toilet experiences of 17th-century Londoners. But how far did that reflect the bathroom habits of the whole population? For this final episode of Toilets through Time, Professor Mark Stoyle leads David Musgrove into the early modern water closet.
Myspace and MTV: how will future historians study the 21st century?
Jane Winters and John Wills discuss how social media and digital records chart the story of recent decades – and how they pose a challenge for historians
From social-media accounts to TV shows and video games, recent decades offer an enormous wealth of material for future historians to explore. But what are the challenges presented by this vast amount of data? And how will historical researchers a hundred years from now make sense of 2025? Matt Elton spoke to historians Jane Winters and John Wills to answer these questions – and find out how the ephemeral digital archives of our current era might differ from the historical sources of previous generations.
Sex and sensationalism: a history of the tabloids
Terry Kirby investigates the 500-year history of tabloid journalism – from the first gossip rags to the muckraking exploits of the 20th-century popular press
Tabloid journalists often get a bad press. From publishing libellous headlines to hacking celebrities’ phones, recent years have not exactly done much to enhance Fleet Street’s reputation. But where did tabloid journalism originally come from? And have media barons always had such a profound influence on current affairs? Journalism lecturer Terry Kirby talks to Jon Bauckham about the evolution of the popular press, covering everything from Georgian gossip sheets to the rise of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Terry Kirby is the author of The Newsmongers: A History of Tabloid Journalism (Reaktion Books, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon
"Violence and American politics have gone hand in hand right from the beginning": a history of political violence
Following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in July 2024, Matt Elton spoke to historian Adam IP Smith about the history of violent attacks on US leaders. In this interview, first published in the October 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine, Smith discussed the political and social repercussions of such assaults across the decades
Matt Elton: Assassinations, and attempted assassinations, have occurred around the world throughout history. But is there a particularly American aspect to this story of political violence? Adam IP Smith: I think there is. Political violence is hardly unique to the US, sadly, so we must be careful about ascribing American exceptionalism to what we saw at Donald Trump’s rally [in Pennsylvania on 13 July 2024]. There is nevertheless an American political tradition into which this specific kind of gun violence – the attempted assassination of leading political figures, especially presidents and presidential candidates – fits. On the podcast | Adam IP Smith on assassinations that shaped US history As a historian, do you think it’s a stretch to suggest that the violence that shaped the founding of the modern nation may have paved the way for later political violence in the US? Certainly the political polarisation and the potential for political violence we’re seeing today form part of a recurrent pattern in US history. There are several reasons, but maybe the core one is that there’s long been a fundamental disagreement within the US about who constitutes the legitimate American nation. That has led to a fear, genuinely held by significant numbers of people involved in the political process, that the stakes are so high because if their political enemies win then everything will be lost – that their freedom, the republic, even their own place in society will be jeopardised. That’s partly because, from the beginning, the president of the United States has held many of the powers held by monarchs – in some respects, even greater powers. George Washington had more influence over the government of the US than George III had over the government in London, for instance. So the monarchical style of the US head of state puts a huge amount of pressure on that role, which needs to feel like the embodiment of America at that particular moment in time. The first US president targeted was Andrew Jackson in 1835 – an episode that’s less familiar to many in the UK than later attempts. Why is that? The reason may be just that it was unsuccessful: the gun wielded by the would-be assassin malfunctioned. If Jackson had been shot on the steps of the Capitol, then we would know about it. Jackson already had a bullet lodged in him from an earlier duel, one of several he’d fought (in one of which, some 30 years earlier, he’d killed a man). So Jackson himself was no stranger to gun violence. He was a deeply controversial and polarising figure – and, perhaps not irrelevantly to this conversation, the president to whom those advancing Trump’s agenda have most wanted to compare Trump. Read more | 50 assassinations that changed the world Jackson was kind of an outsider – the original ‘drain the Washington swamp’ candidate. He first ran to become president in 1824, but failed due to what he called a “corrupt bargain”, and argued that the election had been stolen from him. He ran again in 1828 and won convincingly, defeating John Quincy Adams, who was the last of the old guard. In fact, Jackson was a wealthy slave holder in Tennessee – he wasn’t some hard-scrabble guy anymore – but he had literally been born in a log cabin and had worked his way up. Like Trump – indeed, like Trump’s new running mate, JD Vance, and many other big figures in American political history – he was of Scots Protestant Irish descent. The tradition that Jackson, Trump and Vance have tried to embody is one of rugged individualism, of standing up for yourself. It’s a kind of frontier mythos – the idea that in the end you have nothing to rely on but your wits and your bravery and your courage, and it’s all about you and your family. Jackson was both a perpetrator and a victim of gun violence. So in a way, if he had have been shot, it wouldn’t have fundamentally changed the image of him. It would almost have seemed fitting for him to die in that way, such was the nature of the romance built up around him. Some presidential assassinations had repercussions not just in the US but on the world stage. What examples are particularly illuminating in terms of that wider picture? The global impact of these events is one way of measuring the significance of the US in people’s imaginations. News of Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865 reached Britain a week or so after the event, having been carried by the fastest ship to the west coast of Ireland, then transmitted by telegraph from there to London. Clearly, the assassination of a head of state was dramatic enough, but so much more so because it occurred after the end of the American Civil War. Lincoln was a man who was imagined to have freed America’s enslaved people, and who’d worked his way up, with no formal education – a kind of working-class hero. So big public meetings were held in Hyde Park in London, and in cities all around the world, reflecting a genuine sense of shock and trauma. Just over 16 years later, President James A Garfield was shot. He didn’t die immediately, but lingered on for several months. By then, the transatlantic telegraph system had become effective, so his was the first US presidential assassination to be experienced in real time by Europeans and indeed by Americans around the rest of the country. Because it was an ongoing story, with bulletins issued from the president’s house, it was dragged out over a long period of time and became a global news phenomenon – as did the assassination of President William McKinley 20 years later. The assassination of John F Kennedy on 22 November 1963 was the first to be filmed, with footage taken by a bystander, Abraham Zapruder, made public some years after the shooting. As with so much about America, the world took notice – because everything about the US seems to take place on this massive, consequential scale. Various conspiracy theories surround Kennedy’s assassination. Is that fact linked to the international shock and the global scale of such events? It’s really difficult for people to accept that events that have huge consequences may have had tiny causes. In the case of the Kennedy assassination, the idea that the life of this charismatic, glamorous young president – a hugely consequential figure in the context of the Cold War – could be cut short, that the US and the world could be robbed of his life and his leadership, struck people as a deeply upsetting, outrageous blow. So the idea that the cause of that blow could be one disaffected man, Lee Harvey Oswald, just didn’t compute. The natural tendency is to think: well, something else is at work here. This must be the Cubans, the Russians, or maybe – and of course this became one of the most prominent Kennedy conspiracy theories – we’ve somehow done this to ourselves as Americans. Maybe it’s the FBI or some sinister group within what some on the right now call the ‘Deep State’. That reinforces a recurrent fear and anxiety in American politics: we cannot hold this thing together because there are those among us, potentially millions and millions of them, who are fundamentally opposed to what we are trying to do as real Americans, defenders of the revolution, lovers of freedom, or whatever it might be. That might be a sinister cadre in the ‘Deep State’; it might be millions of MAGA Trump supporters; it might be the ‘liberal elite’ supporting Kamala Harris – whatever it is, at any given moment the stakes feel so high. So people look for conspiratorial, big picture explanations. What were the impacts of the attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan? On 30 March 1981, Ronald Reagan was approaching his limousine after delivering a speech in Washington DC when he was shot by John Hinckley Jr. The president was rushed by the secret service to a hospital, where he underwent surgery; the bullet was removed and he recovered. It was obviously a very dramatic and distressing moment – and one that Reagan brilliantly turned to his advantage. Stories circulated that as he was on the operating table, just before the anaesthetic took effect, he looked at the doctors and, with his trademark chuckle, said: “I hope you guys are all Republicans.” One of the doctors reportedly responded: “Today, Mr President, we’re all Republicans” – which of course was a great line to spin out. When he was giving a speech a few years later, a balloon popped nearby – and, without missing a beat, Reagan said: “Missed me.” Reagan was a great showman, like Donald Trump is a great showman, and he made great political capital out of this attempt on his life and the sangfroid with which he’d responded. Do you think that there is a direct relationship between political discourse and political violence, and are there examples that demonstrate that point? In a way, this gets to the heart of the problem. Is there a direct relationship? No. Is there a relationship? Yes, there surely must be. So does this explain what the shooter was doing in Pennsylvania on 13 July? In this case, of course, we will probably never know his motivations. However, plenty of Republicans have said that this shooting was a direct consequence of Democrats warning that Donald Trump is an authoritarian, a fascist and so on, and that if he becomes president, American democracy is on the line. Therefore, by implication, he must be stopped at all costs. Does it more broadly explain not just why this happened but why there was an attack on [former speaker of the House of Representatives] Nancy Pelosi’s husband; why there was an attempted kidnapping of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer; why two congressmen have been shot in the past 10 or 15 years; why we see a lot of violence around the edges of political rallies; why we see pushing and shoving of press representatives; why we see frequent threats of violence to American politicians? At the moment, American politics is intensely polarised. It’s partisan in a way that is just not true in Britain at the moment, and wasn’t true in the US through the 1960s and even into the nineties, but that has been true in the US in the past. I think that, though there is no direct relationship between political violence and polarisation, it’s clear that when you have a highly polarised polity, when people are driven to the point of believing that so much is at stake if the other side wins, then it’s not really so surprising when these kinds of attacks happen. In the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt on Trump, President Biden said: “The idea that there’s political violence or violence in America like this is just unheard of.” Do you think that the US has a problem with recognising the violence in its history? The idea that this is somehow sort of un-American is palpably ridiculous. Violence and American politics have gone hand in hand right from the beginning, and some of this – perhaps quite a lot of it – is not just to do with the polarisation of politics, which is periodic, but to do with the massive availability of guns. In a country where there are more guns than there are people, where it’s extraordinarily easy to get hold of firearms, clearly this kind of assassination attempt is far more likely than it otherwise would be. Adam IP Smith is Edward Orsborn professor of United States politics & political history at the University of Oxford. He is also the host of The Last Best Hope? podcast This article first appeared in the October 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Crime fiction history: everything you wanted to know
Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
From Hercule Poirot to Sherlock Holmes, Martin Edwards answers key questions on the history of the crime fiction genre
From Hercule Poirot to Sherlock Holmes, crime fiction has long been a popular genre. But what was the first crime novel? How has crime writing affected real-life cases? And what was the 'Detection Club'? In this 'everything you wanted to know' episode, Isabel King is joined by crime fiction author and researcher Martin Edwards to discuss the history of the influential genre.