The Rewind Daily

History's best stories, rewound daily. Forgotten facts, strange twists and the moments that changed everything. Hit follow and press play.

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

@RetroNewsNow Monday nights, 1986. No streaming, no pause button, just the whole family gathered round the TV for Designing Women. 📺

And when Julia Sugarbaker started one of her speeches, you didn't dare leave the room.

They really don't make TV moments like this anymore. 💛

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

Doing donuts in front of a courthouse is the most efficient crime ever. You've already arrived at court. 😂🚗

Drunk driving is as old as driving itself. The first known arrest came in 1897, when London cabbie George Smith crashed into a building and was fined 25 shillings.

128 years later, the circles continue. 🍩

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

Two months after her kidnapping, the heiress was caught on camera robbing a bank, rifle in hand. 🏦

Patty Hearst now called herself "Tania." She was convicted, then had her sentence commuted by Carter and was pardoned by Clinton in 2001.

Brainwashed victim or willing rebel? The debate's never ended. 👀

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

@stats_feed Here's the trick: they're sorted by how each letter's name is spelled. Aitch, are, bee, dee, double-u… 🔤

But the real mystery? The alphabet once had a 27th letter. Schoolkids recited "&" at the end as "and per se and," which slurred into "ampersand."

Where did it ever go?

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

@charlieINTEL Paying by the hour to play? Gaming just rewound to 1995. ⏪🕹️

Back then, AOL charged by the hour to be online, and arcades ate your quarters by the minute. AOL only switched to unlimited for $19.95 a month in late 1996.

🪙 Insert coin to continue your Vice City heist. 😂

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

@ClutchPoints Joel Embiid being late isn't new. He was late to basketball itself. 🏀

He didn't start playing seriously until about 15 in Cameroon, and taught himself moves by watching Hakeem Olajuwon tapes on YouTube.

Imagine where he'd be if he'd started on time. 👀

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

P.T. Barnum bet his fortune on a singer he'd never heard sing. 🎶

Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale," was born 206 years ago today, Oct 6, 1820.

Barnum signed her for 150 American concerts at $1,000 a night, on reputation alone. When they met, she asked where he'd heard her. He hadn't.

30,000 people crowded outside her New York hotel. The first concert ticket sold at auction for $225.

America had pop-star mania before it had the light bulb. ⏪

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

Be honest. What was your very first Instagram post? 📸

Oct 6, 2010: Instagram launched, on iPhone only. About 25,000 people signed up on day one.

Somewhere out there is a blurry sunset with the Valencia filter that you'd rather forget.

Drop yours below. No judgment. (Some judgment.)

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

Bette Davis claimed she named the Oscar. After her husband's backside. 🏆

She died 37 years ago today, Oct 6, 1989.

Her story: the statuette's rear looked just like that of her first husband, Harmon Oscar Nelson. Other people have claimed credit for the name too, and nobody has ever settled it.

What's not in doubt is the line on her tomb:
"She did it the hard way." ⏪

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

@rogerhere @Jason_R_Burt Exactly, Roger. The last forts were starved out, not stormed, a painful grind for a general built for speed.

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

⛵ 112 years ago today, Thor Heyerdahl
was born.

October 6, 1914. In 1947 the Norwegian explorer crossed the Pacific on a balsa-wood raft, the Kon-Tiki: about 4,300 miles from Peru to Polynesia in 101 days.

All to prove it could be done.

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

@RetroNewsNow The greatest basketball player ever retired… to hit .202 in minor league baseball. ⚾😂

He lasted one season with the Birmingham Barons. Then in March 1995, he un-retired with a two-word press release:

"I'm back."

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

@RetroNewsNow Instagram started life as a check-in app named after whiskey: Burbn. 🍻📸

The founders scrapped nearly everything except photo sharing. 18 months later, Facebook bought it for $1 billion, when it had just 13 employees.

Best pivot in tech history?

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

@Saganismm Sagan didn't just say it. He made the whole world feel it. 🌍

In 1990, he convinced NASA to turn Voyager 1 around for one last photo. From about 6 billion km away, Earth appeared as a tiny dot in a sunbeam: the Pale Blue Dot.

Has any photo ever humbled us more?

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

@paullr2008 @HistoryWJacob Well said. History has already delivered its verdict on him.

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

The man who invented movies stepped onto a train and was never seen again. 🎞️

Oct 6, 1889 is the date often given for Thomas Edison's first motion picture. But a Frenchman, Louis Le Prince, had already filmed in Leeds a year earlier.

In 1890, weeks before he was due to unveil his camera, Le Prince boarded a train from Dijon to Paris. No body was ever found.

His family sued Edison. By the time the case ended, Le Prince's son was dead too, under suspicious circumstances.

Edison got the credit. Le Prince never got an ending. ⏪

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

The last Javan rhinos survive thanks to a volcano, and a volcano could also end them. 🌋

After Krakatoa erupted in 1883, its tsunami emptied the coast of Ujung Kulon. The jungle grew back and became their final refuge.

Today, every one of them lives in that single park, in Krakatoa's shadow. 🦏

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

@engineers_feed The rocket that carried them into space was built to destroy London. 🚀

The V-2 was a captured Nazi weapon, made partly by slave labor. After the war, America used it to answer a question no one could: could anything survive up there?

Some tiny flies found out first. 🪰

[The Rewind Daily @TheRewindDaily]

Until 1995, nobody could prove other stars like our Sun had planets at all. 🪐

Oct 6, 1995: Two Swiss astronomers announced 51 Pegasi b, the first one ever found.

We now know of over 5,000. Still think we're alone?

Follow for a new one every day. 📺