No One Saw It Coming
ABC Australia
83 episodes
The bit players, the unexpected twists, the turning point you missed. Join Walkley award-winner Marc Fennell as he uncovers the incredible moments that changed the course of history.
More about the show
New episodes out Tuesday.
Episodes page 1 of 2
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The lost shipwreck that started a navy
A warship born from panic. A cannon that was never fired. A shipwreck that's been lost for over a century. And one man determined to find it. Dr James Hunter (Manager of Maritime Archaeology at the Australian National…
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Fake names and forbidden love at sea
In 1766, a "man" named Jean boarded a French naval ship as a botanist's valet. But Jean was hiding a secret. For years, that secret sailed around the world with them, until one day it was revealed that Jean was…
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Jon Ronson, the Manosphere and a Castle
A castle sits in the streets of American suburbia and from the outside it looks bizarre. But what’s on the inside is even weirder... A dog named Cerberus, a basement nightclub with poles and cages, and a room full of…
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Australia's secret slave trade
From the mid-1800s, more than 62,000 Pacific Islanders were kidnapped, tricked or coerced into labour on Queensland's sugar and cotton plantations. Ryan Butta (Author, Blackbirding) and Emelda Davis, whose grandfather…
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The Pastry War: Half-baked diplomacy
A ransacked bakery. A wildly inflated bill. A demand so absurd it should have been laughed out of the room. Instead it triggered warships. In 1838, France used a pastry chef's grievance to justify a blockade, a siege,…
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The Pig War: Hogging the border
A pig trots over an invisible border, wandering into a potato farmer's garden. It's not the first time it's trespassed but it is the last. The farmer takes his gun off the wall and shoots it dead. But what he doesn't…
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The mythical football war
It’s called The Football War and raged for just 100 hours. It’s a catchy name for a conflict supposedly sparked by a World Cup qualifier game. But behind the catchy title, and away from the football pitch lies a…
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Birds 1 - Humans 0
In 1932 Australia sent soldiers with machine guns to stop 20,000 emus rampaging through wheat fields. What followed was a national embarrassment and earned the emus a reputation as the victors of one of history's…
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The man who gave the gods new faces
Their faces are everywhere: on calendars, incense packets, and soap packaging. But how did the Hindu deities' faces go beyond temples and shrines? In nineteenth-century India, Ravi Varma dared to paint the gods in a…
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What really happened at Pompeii?
You think you know Pompeii. A city wiped out. People frozen in time. A disaster that stopped time. But how much of that story is actually true? Ancient historian and writer Dr Jess Venner (The Lost Voices of Pompeii)…
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Titanic mistakes sunk a black empire
Marcus Garvey is known as a civil rights activist and leader of the Pan-Africanism movement. But there’s a part of his story you may not know about. Social historian Darrel Blake tells Marc Fennell (Stuff The British…
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The prince, the liar, and the race to save cars
Imagine driving from Beijing, through the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, and across Russia into Europe. The roads are terrible, you don't have petrol stations and you have pack animals carrying supplies. Oh, and it's a race so…
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The suit that sparked a riot
What do you get when you combine fashion, race and a world war? From the jazz clubs and dance halls of the 1940s to an infamous city riot in Los Angeles, the zoot suit was made to draw attention. But sometimes, that…
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Richard Fidler: The lie that toppled a regime
A well-placed lie can bring down a whole government. Hard to believe, but in Prague in 1989 that’s exactly what happened. In amongst a heaving student protest, a body was carried away. That body became a flashpoint…
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Escaped the Nazis and lost by Australia
She stands tall with her head tilted towards you. She’s wearing an incredible gown made of the most beautiful fabric. This is a society woman living in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. But she will see things…
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The queen behind the witch hunts
In the late 1500s a man sails across the North Sea. He’s battered by wind and wave. The sea seems angry, almost furious at him. He thinks it must be more than just a bad storm. It must be supernatural. This man is…
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An 11-year-old sent us on a mission...
Getting a letter these days is pretty special, especially when it’s from an 11-year-old listener. Ellie wrote us a letter asking about the nursery rhyme Ring a Ring o' Roses, wondering if it really is about the plague.…
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The secret Aussie plant that saved D-Day
D-Day was the biggest land and water invasion in history and would go on to be a huge turning point in WWII. And it all depended on a plant. Specifically a leaf from a tree that grows on the east coast of Australia,…
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Grapefruits vs Apartheid
In a Dublin supermarket in 1984, a young woman makes a split-second decision. She refuses to sell two grapefruits. Her job is on the line, and there’s a recession raging across the country. But she’s doing it for the…
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History’s favourite sex toys
*CONTENT WARNING* This episode explores mature themes such as sex and masturbation. When the wooden object was unearthed, the archaeologists were stumped. What was this thing? It looked like a club and was found among…
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The houseplant that changed the British Empire
On the face of it, it’s just a box. It has wooden slats, a peaked roof and glass panels. But inside this box is something that will breathe, grow, and impact lives around the world, for better or worse. Dr Luke Keogh…
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Stop blaming rats for the plague
If you were asked where the plague came from you’d probably say rats. Or fleas. And you’d say it swept across Europe killing up to half of the population. But where exactly did it start and how did it get to Europe in…
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A teenager’s party created Hip-Hop
It started with two turntables and a microphone and became a worldwide movement. Today, Hip hop is one of the biggest music genres in the world - and it all started at a teenager’s back to school party in the Bronx.…
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The vote that shocked the world
In the week before Christmas 1894, a man in the South Australian parliament rolls the dice. He makes a gamble that he thinks will pay off. It’s incredibly risky because if his gamble goes wrong, he gives half the…
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Beware gifts from Soviet spies
After the Second World War, relations between America, Britain and the Soviets were frosty and as the Cold War rivalry intensified, they were watching each other with intense side-eye. And it turns out, listening as…
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The Met Gala began in a dead woman’s closet
The Met Gala’s 2026 theme is Costume Art. But rewind almost 100 years ago, and the fight was to get costumes to be called art at all. And if a handful of very determined women hadn’t pushed to change that, the Met…
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The telegram that caught a killer
When he got on the train to London, he thought he got away with it. He thought he got away with murder. But little did he know that something was racing alongside the train, pulsing deep underground, that would change…
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Clogged sink doomed a space mission
It’s 1926 and two men are working in a lab trying to create antifreeze. Instead, they make a thick, black goo that stinks out the lab and blocks the sink. ABC Science reporter Fiona Pepper tells Marc Fennell (Stuff…
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Ancient Greek built a steam engine for dinner parties
Long before steam trains, before factories, before the Industrial Revolution, someone figured out how to turn steam into motion. And he did it almost two thousand years ago in Ancient Alexandria, and the device he…
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She gave her son smallpox. Her bet paid off.
It was one of the deadliest diseases known to humankind. And just 50 years ago it was officially eradicated. But there’s someone missing from the story of smallpox. A woman whose work was mocked. Who was branded a bad…
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Cocaine wine: The Pope’s energy drink
If you looked at it, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid, but this red wine had something in it that today could land you in jail. It was drunk and endorsed by presidents, royalty and even popes and made its maker a…
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A horse race and a murderer invented cinema
Before cinema, before Hollywood, before we even understood how to make pictures move, there was a man constantly reinventing himself. He was a bookseller, a photographer, an alleged fraud and eventually, a killer. But…
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Starving for freedom: The prison death that changed Ireland
As the Irish Revolution raged year after year, there was a space that the British didn’t expect to become places of revolution - prisons. Jailed rebels became martyrs and Britain’s grip on Ireland began to weaken,…
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Let slaves dance: The secret of New Orleans jazz
When you put on a jazz record, what do you hear? Beyond the trumpet and the sax of course... Well etched into that vinyl and living in that music is a long story that dates back 300 years to a dusty public square…
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She faked insanity. Then became a star.
She was put into an insane asylum at the age of 20. Ten days later she was a celebrity and two years later she had cemented a legacy that would last centuries. But Nellie Bly was not insane. She faked it all. But why?…
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The mafia bar riot that sparked gay pride
28 June 1969 was a regular Saturday night at the Stonewall Inn. Until it wasn’t. “The bar lights blinked on and off. I'd never seen that happen before so I asked my friend what's going on, and my friend said, oh, just…
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The royal roots of French fries
‘Would you like fries with that?’ It’s a question you’ve likely been asked countless times. But what if the only reason French fries are so popular throughout the West today is because of a Queen who lost her head…
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Three words brought down the Berlin Wall
The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 is one of the most famous events of modern history. And with it came a wave of momentous events - the reunification of East and West Germany, the collapse of the Soviet…
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The art heist that made the Mona Lisa famous
It’s arguably the most famous painting in the world. But back in 1911, the Mona Lisa wasn’t an international icon. So what made the painting so famous it would attract millions of visitors to The Louvre every year?…
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The colony that broke Scotland (and made Great Britain)
It was meant to be Scotland’s saving grace - a bold plan to build a colony and dominate global trade. But disease, starvation, and frankly just bad planning was their undoing... and the failed outpost paved the way…
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The Hollywood femme fatale who invented wi-fi
She was called the most beautiful woman in the world and was seen as an exotic Hollywood star in the 1930s. But Hedy Lamarr was more than that. She was also an inventor. During WWII she patented a technology to sink…
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The ballet that caused a riot and changed music
When you combine Russian ballet, French aristocracy, and a little bit of Walt Disney you get a recipe for a riot and one of the most important musical moments in history. Host of Radio National’s The Music Show,…
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The Forgotten Female Codebreakers of WWII
As the Second World War raged in the Pacific, there was a team of codebreakers in Australia working around the clock intercepting and deciphering Japanese messages. It was Australia’s own Bletchley Park, but the team…
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Time is Chaos. The Calendar Tries (And Fails) to Fix That.
From moons to mind bending maths and revolutions, the story of how we got the modern calendar is messy. Matthew Champion, Associate Professor in History at the University of Melbourne, takes Marc Fennell (Stuff the…
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The Nativity Scene You Know—And The One You Don’t
You see it on Christmas cards, in shop windows and at your local church. The nativity scene is everywhere at this time of year. But the scene you know of Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus in the manger, with some animals…
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An 1843 Lifehack Became a Christmas Tradition
There’s one man you can thank - or curse - for your hand cramp after writing all your Christmas cards. Sir Henry Cole was a ‘dumpy’ Englishman who had too many jobs and not enough time to write back to his friends and…
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Poison to Beauty: The Story of Botox
It started as a deadly toxin and became a billion-dollar beauty secret. So how exactly did a poison become the world’s most popular cosmetic fix? It’s all to do with one man who took a plunge and used it to treat eye…
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The First Computer Was Greek (And Shipwrecked)
Over a hundred years ago, some divers jumped into the Mediterranean to look for sponges. Instead, they found ancient treasures. Artefacts, statues, jewellery. And a corroded piece of bronze. Little did they know that…
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William Dalrymple: China’s Game of Thrones
She entered the royal palace as a concubine and became the first and only female emperor of China. She was power hungry, a total operator and if you asked her enemies, a blood thirsty murderer. And her secret weapon to…
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Purple Reign: The Teen Who Bottled Royalty
It was a colour once reserved for emperors and the elite. But a lab mishap soon changed purple forever. Cultural historian and author of the book The Secret Lives of Colour, Kassia St Clair tells Marc Fennell (Stuff…
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