American History Hit

In 1699, Virginia’s government and capital moved from Jamestown to Middle Plantation, renaming it Williamsburg. But why did they abandon Jamestown? In this final episode of our series, Don and Willie ...

What was it like to live in the fort at Jamestown? Who was in charge? What provisions were there? And why is this considered to be the birthplace of enslavement in the United States? Don is joined by ...

What is a Viking? Did they really make it to the United States? And if so, how far did they get? Don speaks to Martyn Whittock about the norse landings in North America. From the Icelandic sagas to th...

How did Frederick Douglass, born into enslavement, rise to become one of the most influential orators, writers, and publishers of his time. By the end of his life in 1895, he was world-renowned and ow...

From suspicion, to siege, to collaboration, to all out war - in this episode we uncover the complex reality of the Jamestown colonists' relationship with the Indigenous peoples of the East Coast. What...

Born enslaved in 1818, by the time of the Civil War Frederick Douglass was famous around the United States and Europe for his work in the abolition movement. So how did this famous orator learn his tr...

In May 1607, over 100 English settlers arrived at Chesapeake Bay on the East Coast of North America. Traveling 50 miles inland along the James River, they established what would become the first perma...

FDR and Winston Churchill spent 113 days in each others' company during WWII. FDR even saw Churchill naked. But how close were the pair in personality and in strategy? How did the personal relationshi...

In the 19th Century, a war on the boundary between Europe and Asia had an unexpected effect. It caused the American public to re-examine one of the terms with which they described race: Caucasian. Don...

They say that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, but did that apply to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Soviet counterpart, Joseph Stalin, during the Second World War? Despite their ideolo...