Dave Does History

In September of 1759, two armies faced each other on a plateau outside Quebec City, on land that belonged to a farmer named Abraham Martin. History remembers it as the Battle of the Plains of Abraham.James Wolfe, the young British general already dying of illness, gambled everything on a nighttime landing and a climb up a cliff the French thought was impassable. By dawn, four thousand redcoats stood ready. Montcalm, the French commander, chose to attack immediately rather than wait for reinforcements.The French fired too soon. The British waited, then unleashed a crushing volley at close range. Within minutes the French line collapsed. Wolfe was shot three times and died hearing of his victory. Montcalm was mortally wounded and died the next day.The battle lasted less than an hour, but it ended French Canada, gave Britain control of the St. Lawrence, and set the colonies on the road toward revolution.

On July 16, 1950, in the early chaos of the Korean War, a Catholic chaplain named Father Herman Felhoelter made a choice that would define the very idea of sacrifice. Surrounded by wounded American soldiers who could not be moved, he stayed behind as the enemy advanced.He knelt to pray over the dying and was gunned down mid-prayer, alongside the men he refused to leave.This is the story of the Chaplain–Medic Massacre, one of the first and most horrifying atrocities of the war. It is a story of faith, courage, and the cold brutality of battle.But more than that, it is a story that reminds us what it means to stand for something greater than yourself. In this episode of Dave Does History, we remember the man who carried no weapon, wore a cross on his arm, and walked into eternity doing what he was called to do: pray.

In the early months of World War II, deep beneath enemy waters, the crew of the USS Silversides faced an unimaginable challenge: an emergency appendectomy performed without a doctor, using improvised tools, and under constant threat of enemy attack. Join us as we dive into the incredible story of Pharmacist’s Mate Thomas A. Moore, who defied the odds to save his crewmate’s life in one of the most daring medical feats in naval history. From bent spoons as surgical tools to a harrowing depth charge escape, this episode captures the ingenuity, resilience, and courage that defined the silent service during WWII.

Alexander Hamilton is one of the most argued over figures in American history, and that alone tells you something important. He was never comfortable, never easy, and never interested in applause. Born illegitimate in the Caribbean, raised amid loss and instability, Hamilton arrived in America with no inheritance except urgency. He believed independence without structure was an illusion and that liberty required systems strong enough to survive human nature.We trace Hamilton’s life from obscurity to influence, from the chaos of revolution to the hard work of building a nation that could actually function. We will follow him as soldier, writer, constitutional architect, and the first Secretary of the Treasury, a man who wired the republic with credit, authority, and consequence. We will also confront his flaws, his scandals, his enemies, and the choices that led to his violent death.Hamilton did not ask to be loved. He asked to be effective. Two centuries later, the country is still living inside the systems he built.

Rome did not fall in a day, and it did not fall because one man crossed a river. That is the version history likes because it is neat and dramatic and wrong in the ways that matter. The crossing of the Rubicon in 49 BC was not a sudden act of ambition. It was the final symptom of a republic that had been quietly coming apart for a generation.By the time Julius Caesar reached that narrow stream, the Roman political system was already jammed solid. Power had shifted away from institutions and toward personalities. Laws had become weapons. Compromise was treated as weakness. The Senate still spoke the language of tradition, but it no longer controlled events. When a system cannot resolve conflict through its own rules, it eventually hands the problem to force.This video is not about celebrating Caesar or condemning him. It is about understanding the machinery that failed before his boots ever touched the water. We will trace how informal alliances replaced law, how fear radicalized politics, and how a constitution designed for a city state collapsed under the weight of empire.The Rubicon matters not because it was crossed, but because by then there was nowhere else to go.

In January 1788, the future of the American experiment advanced not with shouting crowds or dramatic reversals, but with a quiet vote in Connecticut. It was the fifth state to ratify the United States Constitution, and the outcome was never really in doubt. What makes this moment worth our attention is not the margin of victory, but the manner in which the decision was made. Connecticut was known then, as it often is now, for being steady, deliberate, and restrained. That temperament shaped how the state approached revolution, governance, and ultimately the Constitution itself.Connecticut was not indifferent. It was cautious. Its delegates understood that the Constitution was imperfect, that power carried risks, and that liberty did not preserve itself automatically. They accepted the document not as an article of faith, but as a workable framework designed to survive uncertainty, foreign threats, and human fallibility.At the heart of the story is a simple idea. Union was not an abstract ideal. It was a matter of survival. Connecticut’s ratification helped legitimize the Constitution at a critical moment, proving it could earn the assent of the most careful members of the union. This is a story about decisions made without applause, and why those decisions often matter most.

In January of 1788, the future of the American experiment moved forward not with fireworks or fiery speeches, but with a measured vote in a cold New England hall. Connecticut did what it had always done. It listened, it weighed, and it decided. This was the fifth state to ratify the Constitution, a moment often treated as a footnote, yet one that carried real consequence. Connecticut was not a hotbed of revolutionary passion. It was something rarer and more dangerous to ignore, a place where stability mattered and where compromise was treated as a civic virtue rather than a surrender. The very framework of the Constitution rested on a solution proposed by Connecticut men, which meant this vote was never just symbolic. It was personal. In this episode, we walk through that quiet decision, the arguments that shaped it, and the deeper fears that hovered behind polite debate. This is a story about union, defense, and the uncomfortable truth that liberty survives only when it is structured well enough to endure uncertainty.

Good morning and welcome back to Dave Does History, where the past is not dead, not even sleeping, and occasionally still smells like smoke.Today we pick up the Liberty 250 series at the moment when grievances stop being theoretical and start leaving people homeless. Long before the Declaration was signed, long before independence was inevitable, British policy chose fire as its argument. Towns burned. Harbors closed. Governors ruled from cannon decks instead of capitols. And the colonies took notes.This episode walks through the winter of 1775 and 1776, when Lord Dunmore’s choices in Virginia did more to unite the colonies than any speech or pamphlet ever could. Norfolk burns. Society fractures. Reconciliation quietly dies without a press release.Jefferson would later compress all of this into one sentence. We are here to unpack what that sentence really cost.History rarely announces the moment when compromise becomes impossible. It just lights the match and waits.

Good morning and welcome back to Dave Does History on Bill Mick Live, where the past is not dead, not even sleeping, and occasionally still smells like smoke.Today we pick up the Liberty 250 series at the moment when grievances stop being theoretical and start leaving people homeless. Long before the Declaration was signed, long before independence was inevitable, British policy chose fire as its argument. Towns burned. Harbors closed. Governors ruled from cannon decks instead of capitols. And the colonies took notes.This episode walks through the winter of 1775 and 1776, when Lord Dunmore’s choices in Virginia did more to unite the colonies than any speech or pamphlet ever could. Norfolk burns. Society fractures. Reconciliation quietly dies without a press release.Jefferson would later compress all of this into one sentence. We are here to unpack what that sentence really cost.History rarely announces the moment when compromise becomes impossible. It just lights the match and waits.

For eighty years, USS Harder lived in a strange place in American memory. She was famous, admired, and deeply respected, yet she was also missing. Her story ended in silence, somewhere off the coast of the Philippines, with no wreck, no coordinates, and no certainty. Only patrol reports, witness accounts, and the names of seventy nine men carved into stone.Harder was commanded by Sam Dealey, a Texan who failed out of the Naval Academy, fought his way back in, and became one of the most aggressive submarine commanders of the Second World War. He did not simply sink ships. He hunted destroyers, the very vessels designed to kill submarines, and he did it at point blank range. Senior admirals said his fifth war patrol was the most brilliant of the war. They also said his record would never be equalled.In May 2024, that long silence finally broke. The wreck of USS Harder was found, resting upright on the seabed, its damage matching the historical record. For the first time, the story had a place to end.This is not a tale about glory polished smooth by time. It is about risk, responsibility, and the cost of victory. It is about a captain, his crew, and a boat that went down fighting, and was finally found.

For eighty years, USS Harder lived in a strange place in American memory. She was famous, admired, and deeply respected, yet she was also missing. Her story ended in silence, somewhere off the coast of the Philippines, with no wreck, no coordinates, and no certainty. Only patrol reports, witness accounts, and the names of seventy nine men carved into stone.Harder was commanded by Sam Dealey, a Texan who failed out of the Naval Academy, fought his way back in, and became one of the most aggressive submarine commanders of the Second World War. He did not simply sink ships. He hunted destroyers, the very vessels designed to kill submarines, and he did it at point blank range. Senior admirals said his fifth war patrol was the most brilliant of the war. They also said his record would never be equalled.In May 2024, that long silence finally broke. The wreck of USS Harder was found, resting upright on the seabed, its damage matching the historical record. For the first time, the story had a place to end.This is not a tale about glory polished smooth by time. It is about risk, responsibility, and the cost of victory. It is about a captain, his crew, and a boat that went down fighting, and was finally found.

This episode begins with a question that refuses to stay buried in the past. Who will remember me when I am gone. Not who will write my name in a book, not who will record a date or a statistic, but who will pause long enough to acknowledge that I lived.Long before history was written, people poured out libations. Wine, oil, water, a simple offering tipped onto the ground to honor the dead. It was not about superstition. It was about memory. Someone stood there. Someone remembered. Someone refused to let a life vanish without notice.Today, we rely on history to do that work for us. We build archives, monuments, timelines, and grand narratives. History is very good at telling us what happened. It is far less capable of remembering who paid the price. Kings and generals survive. Ordinary people fade into numbers.This video explores that gap. The space between history as a record and remembrance as a human act. It asks why cultures across the world developed rituals to honor the forgotten dead, and why modern society often struggles to do the same.This is not an argument against history. It is a reminder that history alone is not enough.History explains the past. Remembrance keeps it human.Let us begin.

Today we are talking about something older than empires and more stubborn than forgetting. It is the simple act of remembering the people history does not bother to name. Long before textbooks and archives, people poured out libations. Wine, oil, water, a small offering tipped onto the ground to say someone lived, someone mattered, someone was not invisible.We tend to think of that as a strange ancient habit. But the question behind it never went away. Who will remember me. Who will pause long enough to say my name, or at least admit that I was here.History is very good at big stories. Wars, plagues, kings, and generals. It is far less interested in the ordinary people who carried the weight of those stories on their backs. Tonight, we are going to talk about that gap. About what history can do, what it cannot do, and why pouring out the libations of history still matters now.

George Catlett Marshall is one of those figures whose importance becomes clearer the longer one studies him and more puzzling the more one tries to summarize him neatly. He does not lend himself to slogans or cinematic shorthand. There is no single moment that captures him, no battlefield pose that defines his legacy. Instead there is a long accumulation of decisions, habits, and silences that, taken together, helped shape the American century. He was the only American to serve as Army Chief of Staff, Secretary of State, and Secretary of Defense, and he did so without ever behaving as though history owed him attention. That alone should give modern audiences pause.

George Catlett Marshall is one of those figures whose importance becomes clearer the longer one studies him and more puzzling the more one tries to summarize him neatly. He does not lend himself to slogans or cinematic shorthand. There is no single moment that captures him, no battlefield pose that defines his legacy. Instead there is a long accumulation of decisions, habits, and silences that, taken together, helped shape the American century. He was the only American to serve as Army Chief of Staff, Secretary of State, and Secretary of Defense, and he did so without ever behaving as though history owed him attention. That alone should give modern audiences pause.

Granada in the winter of 1066 was not supposed to end like this. If you had asked a court poet, a tax collector, or a Jewish merchant counting bolts of cloth in the souk, they would have told you that the age was precarious but workable, dangerous but dazzling. Al-Andalus still wore the reputation of refinement like a borrowed robe, a land where Arabic verse sparkled, Jewish scholarship flourished, and Christian kingdoms loomed at a safe distance, for the moment. The brochures had not yet been printed, but the legend was already forming. A Golden Age, people would later call it, a time of convivencia, the sort of word that sounds better the further away one gets from the blood.

Granada in the winter of 1066 was not supposed to end like this. If you had asked a court poet, a tax collector, or a Jewish merchant counting bolts of cloth in the souk, they would have told you that the age was precarious but workable, dangerous but dazzling. Al-Andalus still wore the reputation of refinement like a borrowed robe, a land where Arabic verse sparkled, Jewish scholarship flourished, and Christian kingdoms loomed at a safe distance, for the moment. The brochures had not yet been printed, but the legend was already forming. A Golden Age, people would later call it, a time of convivencia, the sort of word that sounds better the further away one gets from the blood.

December 29, 1876, did not begin as a legend. It began as weather, the sort of Lake Erie weather that has always made honest people glance at the window and reconsider their plans. A blizzard rolled in with the hard confidence of something older than railroads, older than schedules, older than the idea that human beings can bargain with nature if they print the timetable in bold type. Snow came in sheets, wind drove it sideways, and the whole landscape around Ashtabula turned into a white blur with sharp edges. The railroad still ran, because that is what railroads did in the nineteenth century. They sold the public speed and certainty, and they sold themselves something even more intoxicating, the belief that steel and ambition could tame the continent.

December 29, 1876, did not begin as a legend. It began as weather, the sort of Lake Erie weather that has always made honest people glance at the window and reconsider their plans. A blizzard rolled in with the hard confidence of something older than railroads, older than schedules, older than the idea that human beings can bargain with nature if they print the timetable in bold type. Snow came in sheets, wind drove it sideways, and the whole landscape around Ashtabula turned into a white blur with sharp edges. The railroad still ran, because that is what railroads did in the nineteenth century. They sold the public speed and certainty, and they sold themselves something even more intoxicating, the belief that steel and ambition could tame the continent.

Woodrow Wilson remains one of the most complicated figures ever to occupy the White House, praised as a visionary and condemned as a regressor, often in the same sentence. He was the only American president to hold a Ph.D., a former university president who believed the nation could be guided, instructed, and improved if only it understood itself properly. That belief reshaped the American state, modernized the economy, and carried the United States onto the world stage. It also justified segregation at home, repression during wartime, and a moral certainty that left little room for dissent.