Almost History
Almost History. Always incredible. What if ... ? Almost History tells the amazing true stories behind the aborted missions, cancelled plans, utopian dreams, failed revolutions and hubristic designs that didn't quite make it from the drawing board to change the real world. Rescued from the footnotes, archives and passing references, each episode explores what almost happened and explains why it didn't.
Episodes
12 episodes
Opening the iron curtain - the East Germany's day of dissent
It’s the summer of 1953, and, across East Germany, angry people take to the streets. This isn’t a polite street protest. This is a furious, red flag ripping, police beating, office burning rampage. The crowds...
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Season 1
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Episode 12
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19:45
Operation Unthinkable - Churchill's plan to attack Russia and start a Third World War
According to Field Marshal Montgomery, rule number one on the first page of the book of war is ‘do not march on Moscow’.In April 1945, Winston Churchill ordered the British Chiefs of Staff to rip up the rule book and plan for an attack o...
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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23:08
Louis of England - history’s forgotten King of England
In August of 1216, the King of Scotland rode down the entire length of England to pay homage to a new English king at Dover. The Scottish monarch bent his knee to a warrior prince who was the pride and hope of his dynasty. ...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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23:19
Princess Mary Tudor's flight to freedom
In the summer of 1550, Princess Mary, the eldest daughter of Henry VIII, was packing her belongings and preparing to flee her home.Her Tudor brother was the figurehead for an increasingly Protestant regime. Mary clung to her mother's Cat...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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21:56
Cancelling Christmas and the Plum Pudding Riots
In 1647, the new puritan government tried to cancel Christmas. People in Canterbury protested in a peculiarly English way, with a destructive game of football followed by a mass brawl. The city’s Plum Pudding Riots led t...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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12:59
The Prince of Poyais - settling in the country that never was
In 1822, Gregor MacGregor committed what The Economist newspaper has called the ‘biggest fraud in history’ and ‘the greatest confidence trick of all time’.Investors, many of them Scottish, put forward vast sums towards creating a colony ...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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22:12
A wonderful paradise on the Isthmus of Panama
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, Scotland sank a huge chunk of its national wealth into an audacious scheme to colonise central America. become a more equal partner with England under the Stuart crown. The colony was to s...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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18:55
Roosevelt's third term and the voice from the sewers
In the first half of 1940 only one question mattered in American politics. Would Franklin D. Roosevelt break with tradition and run for a third term as President of the United States? The New York Times proclaimed it as 'the all-absorbing polit...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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17:33
The British Hindenberg disaster and the demise of Imperial Airships
Imperial Airships would bring the far flung peoples of the British Empire closer together than ever before. Every day, blimps would slip their masts near London carrying passengers and freight bound for Montreal, Cairo, Karachi, Singapore and S...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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22:11
Hitler’s dreams to unify his empire with a monstrous railway
In 1941, Adolf Hitler issued orders to Nazi Germany’s railway officials. He wanted them to develop a new type of railway. It was to be bigger, far bigger, than anything that had ever been seen.Trains the height and width of a...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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16:51
Draining the swamp - Garibaldi's plan to diver Rome's river
In 1875, Rome came close to losing its river.In that year, the liberator of Italy, General Giuseppe Garibaldi, visited and announced plans to clean up the Eternal City. His main target was the River Tiber. Garibaldi would solve prob...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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13:01
Achtung! Achtung! Dystopian adventures with Nazi TV
What if … ... Nazi Germany had been able to roll out the television equivalent of its inescapable radio network?Everywhere you turn, you see the unmistakable face of Adolf Hitler. His voice echoes in your head, broadcas...
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Season 1
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Episode 1
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15:52
