In 2014, an avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall killed 16 sherpas on Mount Everest
In 2014, Sierra Leone was devastated by Africa's biggest Ebola outbreak on record
In 2008, India and Bangladesh were reconnected by train after 43 years
In May 2001, 52 men were arrested in a gay nightclub floating on the River Nile
Hiroo Onoda spent 30 years fighting in the jungle, believing the war was still going on
How General Franco kept the hand of St Teresa of Avila for spiritual guidance
In 1994, an undercover operation was launched to recover the Scream painting
In 1962, Thessaly’s Lake Karla was drained by the Greek government
Bombings in Uganda in 2010 killed 74. Many were football fans watching the World Cup
The lives of 14 black American footballers are changed forever in a fight against racism
In 1999, a delicious new tradition was born in Sweden's kitchens
Bluetooth was invented in the 1990s in Lund, Sweden
Fifty years ago Sweden introduced gender neutral parental leave
In 1958, Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin invented the three-point safety belt for cars
In 1974, Swedish act Abba won the Eurovision song contest
April 1994 was the start of the Rwandan genocide. One hundred days of atrocities followed
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed to block the Soviet Union's expansion
In 1980, a seaside town opened a beach where people could strip off as they pleased
How the life-saving method to stop choking was developed
In 1967, the Mangla Dam was built in Mirpur, Pakistan, spurring a huge global migration
How Wham! became the first Western pop act to perform in communist China
In 1974, Chinese farmers stumbled upon an astonishing archaeological site
Hundreds of thousands of Asian women were forced into sex slavery in the 1930s and 1940s
Thousands of people were sent to re-education camps during China’s cultural revolution
In 1958, Zhou Youguang introduced a new writing system in China
Vesuvius is famous for burying Pompeii but it last erupted in 1944, during World War Two
The forgotten story of Winifred Atwell, the pianist from Trinidad who broke sales records
How Guarani was officially recognised in Paraguay’s new constitution
In 1992 a student found a set of fossilised footprints from the earliest vertebrate
Nearly 200 died when Spanish commuter trains were bombed in 2004
Ghyslain Wattrelos' wife and two children were on MH370, the plane that disappeared.
In 2002, a nun was sent to northern Uganda to help those suffering from a bloody conflict
In 1974, a 41-year regime was overthrown in a day
In World War Two, tens of thousands of children left Paris to escape the threat of bombs
In 2010, Uruguay was taken to court by a tobacco company for its trailblazing smoking ban
Beginning in 1984, a dispute over an island was marked by geniality, and bottles of booze
In 1987, the looting of an ancient pyramid led to an extraordinary golden discovery
The Torah scrolls stolen by the Nazis, rescued by an London Jewish community.
The hugely popular Soviet holiday camp, Artek
In 2014, Russia took over the Crimean peninsula
In 2003, Whistler Blackcomb won its bid to host the Winter Olympics
A memorial for the ashes of Christopher Columbus opened in the Dominican Republic in 1992
The 2009 murder of Vicky Hernandez forced recognition of transgender rights in Honduras
In 1975, 90% of all women in Iceland took part in a massive nationwide protest
Soviet scientist Vladimir Demikhov shocked the world with his two-headed dog experiments
In 1972, a Danish brewery created Supermalt
How Gort in the west of Ireland became home to so many Brazilians
Since the 1990s the Juliet Club has answered letters to the Shakespearian heroine
In 1974, a kidnapped socialite joined forces with her captors
In 1940 a rescue operation helped Allied servicemen escape from Nazi-occupied France
In 1973 a fashion show was held in France which the media dubbed the Battle of Versailles
Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her bus seat helped end segregation in the United States
She overcame poverty, health problems and racism to become one of Peru’s greatest singers
In 2003, human rights lawyer Hauwa Ibrahim defended Amina Lawal from death by stoning
In 1986, Charlotte Mensah went to work in the UK's first luxury Afro-Caribbean hair salon
Cyberia, billed as the World's first internet cafe opened in London in 1994
In 2008, seeds began arriving at a frozen vault designed to save the world’s food supply
In 1980, poor rural workers occupied land owned by the rich and violent clashes followed
How Brazilian priest Leonardo Boff was punished for his writing on liberation theology
During the Cold War a high-ranking Polish colonel passed Soviet secrets to the CIA
Sándor Szűcs was hanged for trying to escape communist Hungary with his lover
The national hero was branded a traitor for collaborating with Japan during World War Two
Mildred Gillars became the first woman in American history to be convicted of treason
In 1939, Vidkun Quisling asked Hitler to invade Norway
In the early 2000s, a woman known as ‘Lady Tarzan’ fought India’s so called timber mafia
Bob Golding turned Ibadan Zoo into one of Nigeria's biggest attractions in the 1970s
Protests after Iran's 2009 election caused one man to be interrogated for 118 days
In 1975, unarmed Moroccans faced off against gun-carrying Spanish soldiers
In 1984, President Zuazo went on hunger strike, in an attempt to stabilise Bolivia
How one man's secret recordings revealed one of Spain's biggest corruption scandals
The first World Laughter Day took place in Mumbai, India in January 1998
In 1970 Natalia Makarova became the first female ballet star to defect from Russia
The fate of Louis-Charles, imprisoned in 1795, was for years shrouded in rumour
In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country to legalise gay marriage
In 1989, a huge solar flare ground life to a halt in Quebec
In 1937, the Hindenburg bust into flames during mooring, killing 35 people on board.
In 1999, skydiver Jari Kuosma developed the first commercial wingsuit
In 1985, news broke of a major environmental discovery: a hole in the earth’s ozone layer
In 1990, a space probe's photograph of Earth captured the enormity of space
In 1984, Ken Hom taught TV audiences to cook Chinese food for the first time
Exploring the different theories behind the creation of pad Thai
In 1994, a tomato became the world's first genetically-engineered food on sale
How the Chinese gooseberry became the kiwi and one of New Zealand’s biggest exports
How the chocolate and hazelnut spread was created in 1946
In 1969, the singer Dafydd Iwan campaigned for official recognition of the Welsh language
There was an international outcry in 2014 when three journalists were imprisoned in Egypt
In 1973, the poet and prominent communist tried to flee persecution in Chile
In 1975, the king of Saudi Arabia was shot by his nephew
In 2009 a tsunami killed 149 people. Lumepa Hald tells the story of destruction and loss
In 2013, South Africa's first black president was buried in his ancestral village
In 1983, a suspected kidnapping led to scandal
How the great poet kept writing even through the darkest days of Soviet history
In 1998, the Russian president condemned the Soviet violence that killed Tsar Nicholas II
In 1918, the Russian royal family were killed by the Bolsheviks
In 1993, a controversial sci-fi video game called DOOM was released
In 1977 a woman became one of thousands who disappeared from the streets of Buenos Aires
In 1967, army officers seized power in Greece in a US-backed coup
In 1945, a collection that would amass 9,479 brains was started
How Mathieu Kassovitz's critique of policing shocked French society
In 1948, the Dover Sun House, in the US, was the first home to be heated by solar power
Tanzania's leader, Julius Nyerere, made Swahili the official language in the early 1960s
In 1986, remote parts of Cameroon were turned into ghost villages overnight
In 1977, the white-winged guan was rediscovered in Peru after a century
Christmas 1983 saw frenzied shoppers buy three million Cabbage Patch Kids
In 2008, 10 gunmen killed more than 100 people in Mumbai’s busiest hot spots
In 2003, Paris was overwhelmed by the hottest European heatwave for 500 years
In 1960, John F Kennedy became the youngest person to be elected United States president.
Chun Shui Tang tea house in Taiwan began selling bubble tea in 1987
How Zambia became independent in 1964
In 2000 Franck Goddio made one of the greatest ever underwater discoveries
How Bolivians in the city of Cochabamba fought against the “leasing of the rain”
The scientist produced an X-ray photograph in 1952, that helped show the structure of DNA
In 2010, a cloud of volcanic ash brought Europe’s planes back to earth
How engineer Sheldon Kaplan and his team made the EpiPen, the lifesaving allergy device
In 2004, a hippo and a tortoise became friends. Their story gained worldwide fame
On 9 November 1993 the historic bridge was destroyed during the Bosnian War
How Nazia and Zoheb Hassan changed South-East Asian pop with their album, Disco Deewane
Showbiz star, Debbie McGee describes being caught up in the Iranian revolution in 1978
More than 300 people died in Paraguay's capital in 2004
The actress Jane Seymour shares what it was like being rock star Freddie Mercury's bride
In 1986 Dr Aleida Guevara travelled from Cuba to treat children in communist Angola
In 1962 a prototype of the cockpit flight recorder was tested in Australia
In 1983, scientists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris first discovered the HIV virus
In 2010 a $3.6billion fund began to stop oil drilling in Ecuador’s Yasuni national park
In 2013 protests in Istanbul’s Gezi Park led to civil unrest across Turkey
Professor Gift Mugano describes when Zimbabwe’s inflation hit 89.7 sextillion per cent
In 1993, a Nigerian Airways flight from Lagos to Abuja was hijacked
On 12 September 1980, the military took control of Turkey
In 1973, the first bridge connecting Europe and Asia was completed
Donny Osmond shares his memories of teen hysteria in 1973
Lagos Fashion Week was launched in 2011 putting Nigerian style on the global map
In the 1990s, hundreds of young women were murdered in a Mexican border town
In 2013, an eight-storey building in Bangladesh collapsed killing more than 1,000 people
In 1992, Cambodia held its first peace walk aimed at uniting a country torn apart by war
In 2013, acid attack survivors in India celebrated a landmark Supreme Court ruling
In 1966, Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, one of Africa's most famous leaders was ousted from power
Ghana's independence in 1957 was marked with a new flag designed by Theodosia Okoh
In 2004, Kenyan great grandfather Kimani Maruge became the oldest person to start school
On 24 May 2010, artist Yinka Shonibare unveiled his sculpture, Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle
In 2003, the Sarayaku community began a legal battle against an oil company
In 1978, a crude oil tanker was shipwrecked off the coast of France
In 1956 commercial quantities of oil were discovered in Nigeria
In 1993 Kazakhstan partnered with Chevron and started drilling for oil
In October 1973, Arab nations slashed oil production causing prices to sky rocket
In 1998, the world’s first cat cafe opened in Taiwan
In 2013, a ship carrying more than 500 migrants sank off the coast of Lampedusa.
The Latin American soap opera Kassandra helped keep peace in Bosnia
On 2 March 1969 Concorde took to the skies for the first time
In 1975, physicist Wally Hendrickson prevented nuclear disaster in Vietnam
Freddie 'Saddam' Maake tells the story of how he became known as 'Mr Vuvuzela'
In 2013, a Somali militant group attacked the Westgate Mall in Nairobi
In November 2013, George Kourounis descended into the 'Gates of Hell'
In 1978, campaigners won their fight to legalise abortion in Italy despite the opposition
In 1933, Adolf Hitler ordered the sterilisation of people with disabilities
In 2005, an orchestra made up of young Arab and Israeli musicians performed in Ramallah
The final days of one of the most dramatic sieges of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
In 2000, the Israeli opposition leader visited the al-Aqsa Mosque compound
President Bill Clinton’s failed attempt to end the conflict in the Middle East.
How a couple in Oslo brokered peace in the Middle East
The musician's widow recounts his murder at the hands of Chile's army in 1973
On 11 September, General Augusto Pinochet deposed President Salvador Allende
In 2003, Swedish politician Anna Lindh was attacked and killed in Stockholm
Bi Kidude was one of the first women from Zanzibar to sing in public without the veil
In 2013, campaigners were arrested for protesting against oil drilling in the Arctic
We hear from one of the first students to study overseas after the Cultural Revolution
An island expedition helped save Guadalupe's wildlife from extinction...and goats
In August 2013, the army killed hundreds of protestors in Cairo
In June 2000, the first inter-Korean summit since the Korean War took place
How a protest by black activists in 1963 led to the UK's first anti-racism laws
In 1974, women campaigned to swim at the Forty Foot in Dublin, Ireland
How the collapse of Ireland's Celtic Tiger led to thousands of abandoned housing estates
In 1959, the first Rose of Tralee festival was held in Ireland
The Rural Electrification Scheme brought power to 300,000 homes in the Irish countryside
In 1916, a group of Irish rebels launched an armed revolt against British rule
Ruby slippers used in the film 'The Wizard of Oz' were stolen in 2005.
The last performances of Judy Garland in January 1969
In 2004, a chance encounter in Nigeria led to the return of two looted art treasures
It's 70 years since the US-backed coup which brought the Shah of Iran to power in 1953
Matt Berger tripped over a hominid fossil whilst exploring with his dad in South Africa
The success of graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat
Journalist Claude Angeli broke the story that helped topple France's President in 1981
The Jewish charity that helped people in the Bosnian war during the siege of Sarajevo
In 1963, thieves held up a Royal Mail train on its journey from Glasgow to London
How Brownie Wise inspired an army of US housewives to sell Tupperware at parties
In 2012 a dinosaur skeleton became the subject of a restraining order and a court case
In 1982 a Turkish worker in Germany built a treehouse against the Berlin Wall
In the early 1980s deaf children in Nicaragua invented a new sign language
In 1982, Ashok Sahni discovered nests of dinosaur eggs for the first time in India
Uruguay's former president recounts his revolutionary past as a member of the Tupamaros
It’s been 50 years since Mr Bigg's was first launched in Nigeria
There was an attempt to overthrow the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie in December 1960
Pope John Paul II angered supporters of the Sandinista government during a 1983 trip
In 1986 a computer virus was developed accidentally by two brothers in Pakistan
Yeti Mitrani and her family escaped deportation from Greece by the Nazis in 1943
In 1966, American Dean Reed was the first western rock star to tour the Soviet Union
Ruth Handler created the Barbie doll which was first sold in 1959
A first-hand account of the Japanese surrender ceremony in Beijing in 1945
More than 500,000 people barricaded the streets of Riga in January 1991
How the drug tamoxifen became a global success in breast cancer treatment
In 1999, Japanese designer Shigetaka Kurita created a global phenomena - the first emoji
The story of how disposable nappies were invented.
In 1974, a Hungarian architect, Ernő Rubik invented his bestselling puzzle
In 1938 a Hungarian journalist László Bíró invented the ballpoint pen
Princess Diana, Kenny Everett and Freddie Mercury went on a night out in London in 1988
In February 1972 the first group of tourists arrived in the Maldives
The UK’s National Health Service started on 5 July 1948
A democratically elected communist government came to power in eastern India in 1977
In 1986, John Demjanjuk was accused of being ‘Ivan the Terrible’
In 2010 Lady Gaga attended the MTV Video Music Awards in a dress made out of beef
Communist statues in Hungary's capital Budapest were moved to Memento Park in 1993
On 29 June 1995 the Sampoong Department Store in South Korea collapsed killing 502 people
Ebola's first documented outbreak emerged in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1976
On 26 June 1963, United States President John F Kennedy gave a speech in Berlin
In 1971 Alan Shepard played golf on the moon
On 22 June 1948, the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in England
On 7 August 1994, police raided Tasty, a gay nightclub in downtown Melbourne, Australia
Somali fighter pilot Ahmed Mohamed Hassan faced a terrible choice in 1988
On 16 June 1953 East German workers went on strike in protest at Soviet rule
MoMA bought photos from an African-American woman for the first time in 1979.
In 1968, British photographer travelled to Vietnam for his second ever war assignment
Malick Sidibé photographed life in Mali after its independence from France in 1960.
In 1958, aspiring photographer Art Kane captured 57 jazz legends in one immortal image
In 1945 the war correspondent Lee Miller was photographed in Adolf Hitler's bath
In June 1955, more than 80 people were killed and 100 injured at the Le Mans 24-hour race
On 25 January 1933 the last legal communist march was held in Berlin
In 1975, Richard Neave invented a method to rebuild the face of an Egyptian mummy
In 1960s, the Canadian government took academically gifted Inuit children from the homes
In May 1984, Bachendri Pal became the first Indian woman to stand on top of the world
Michael Groom is one of the survivors of a tragic climbing expedition to Mount Everest
In 1999 the body of the British mountaineer, George Mallory, was found on Mount Everest
In 1953, Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mount Everest
In 1953 Edmund Hillary became the first human to reach the top of Mount Everest
On 31 May 1970, the Huascarán avalanche destroyed the town of Yungay, in Peru
On 25 May 1963, leaders of 32 newly-independent African nations came together
In May 2013, the widest tornado ever recorded hit the US state of Oklahoma
In 1992, a photograph of a starving man in a Bosnian concentration camp stunned the world
Sixteen army sergeants seized power in the South American country in 1980
In Stockholm in 1941, Astrid Lindgren made up a story for her daughter about a young girl
Geoff Chapple's vision was to create New Zealand's national walking trail
Eighty years ago a daring raid destroyed dams in Germany's Ruhr Valley
Thousands of German children during World War Two were sent to camps in the countryside
The execution of Flor Contemplacion caused a crisis between the Philippines and Singapore
It is 80 years since the Allies in World War II declared victory in North Africa
In May 1943, the uprising in the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw in Poland came to an end
In 1998, the last commercial flight left Hong Kong's Kai Tak airport
Hundreds died when an passenger ship was hit by Japanese torpedoes in 1942
On 7 May 1999, US bombs damaged the embassy and relations between China and the West
In 1950, four young Scottish students took the 'Stone of Destiny' from Westminster Abbey
In June 2001, Bulgaria’s former King Simeon II won the country’s parliamentary election
In 1661 in England, the body of Oliver Cromwell was dug up for ritual execution
Jean-Bédel Bokassa crowned himself Emperor of the Central African Republic in 1977
In 2012, the lost grave of King Richard III was found under a car park in Leicester
How BBC bosses battled with the government for the right to film inside Westminster Abbey
In 1995, Anna Wintour became chair of the Met Gala and changed it forever
Human rights campaigner Bishop Juan Gerardi was bludgeoned to death on 26 April 1998
James Watson and Francis Crick published their discoveries about DNA on 25 April 1953
In 1966, Althea McNish designed fabrics for the Queen's visit to Trinidad
In 1994, Oleg Kulik posed as a dog to protest conditions in post-Soviet Russia
In 1944, Bill Wynne adopted a Yorkie believed to be one of the first therapy dogs
In 2001, Roselle helped his owner escape from the World Trade Center
In 1989, Wally Conron created the world's first labradoodle
Laika orbited Earth in 1957
Richard Dimbleby was the first broadcaster to report from Belsen concentration camp
On 15 April 2013, two brothers set off bombs at the Boston Marathon
An archaeologist travels to Ukraine to excavate a mass grave from World War Two
In 1970, American student Gary Anderson designed a logo for recycled paper products
In 1868, Tewodros II of Ethiopia prepared to make a last stand against the British army
In 1998, a referendum was held in Northern Ireland and Ireland on the Belfast Agreement
In 2001, Colombian born choreographer Beto Perez created Zumba and it was all by accident
In 1982, a Japanese businessman unveiled the World Peace Giant Kannon in Japan
In 1989, a picnic was held as demonstration for European integration
The story of one young Eritrean woman’s attempt to escape compulsory national service
A Brief History of Time, written by Prof Stephen Hawking, was published in March 1988
In 1997, French engineer Philippe Kahn shared the first ever photo from a mobile phone
In 1975, Minh Nguyen left behind his macho military life and re-trained as a manicurist
Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys, describes the city's technology revolution
In 1978, a group of volunteers in Denmark built their own wind turbine to power a school
In 1998, Keiko the Hollywood killer whale was released back into the wild
From 1988, Mehran Karimi Nasseri, from Iran, spent 18 years living in a Paris airport
The longest running film in India was released in 1995
Three prisoners escaped from the maximum security US jail, Alcatraz in June 1962
In 1974, actress Kieu Chinh found herself on a farm cleaning up after chicken
In 2007, private US Blackwater security guards opened fire on Iraqi civilians
On 13 December 2003, Saddam Hussein was captured by United States forces
In April 2003, playing cards were given to US troops to help them identify Iraqi targets
In March 2003, millions of citizens tried to flee Iraq after the US invasion began
In March 2003, the Iraq War began as the United States bombed the capital, Baghdad
When Chanira Bajrycharya was five years old, she was chosen to be a child goddess in Nepal
Monica McWilliams played a pivotal role in the Northern Ireland peace process
In 2007, the UN deployed its first all-female contingent of peacekeepers in Liberia
In 1982, Rosario Ibarra became the first woman to stand for president in Mexico
She received numerous Hugos and Nebulas - top writing prizes for sci-fi writing
In 2003, Serbia's prime minister was assassinated in Belgrade
In 1992, a zoologist opened one of the world's most remote museums, on an Atlantic island
In 2004, Jason deCaires Taylor built the worlds first underwater gallery in Grenada
In 2009, Rudolf Brazda returned to the former concentration camp he was in for being gay
Fifty years ago, indigenous American activists staged a protest against the US authorities
For the 2012 London Olympic Games the Queen appeared to jump out of a helicopter
A first-hand account of being sent to a Japanese internment camp in Shanghai as a child
In 1958, Stanislav Brebera invented Semtex, a malleable and odourless plastic explosive
Mauritian musician Kaya, died in police custody on 21 February 1999, sparking rioting
In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and Germany decided which city would be the new capital
On 17 February 1980, the first people climbed Everest in winter
In 1923 the sealed burial chamber of Tutankhamun was opened for the first time
In February 1996, gamers in Japan were first introduced to Pokémon
In 1972, Denmark crowned its first queen in 600 years
In 1969, Italy erupted as thousands of workers went on strike
The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI
In April 1986, Pope John Paul II made a historic visit to a Rome synagogue
Cardinal Albino Luciani became Pope John Paul I in 1978. He died 33 days later
In 1959, Pope John XXIII announced a council of all the world's bishops and cardinals
After the death of Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI
In 1981, Leroy Anderson launched Europe’s first dedicated black music station
In 1993, Burundi’s first democratically elected President was murdered
The US space shuttle Columbia broke up on its way back to Earth on 1 February 2003
Two former Prime Ministers describe how they split Czechoslovakia in two in 1993
Mordechai Chertoff was the editor on the Palestine Post when it was bombed in 1948
It took Karlheinz Brandenburg and his team more than a decade to perfect MP3 technology
Using archive recordings, Alex Last tells the story of Britain's most famous hangman
In 2010, a plane carrying the Polish president, crashed and killed everyone on board
Yoshikuni Noguchi was a prison guard in Japan and witnessed the hanging of a prisoner
Paul McLoone recalls the time he was the voice of Martin McGuinness
In 2009 a vaccine designed to stop swine flu appeared to trigger a sleep disorder
Between 1960 and 1966, France carried out 17 nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara
In the 1990s a generation of Albanians got their education crammed into private homes
In 2013, horse meat was discovered in beef products across Europe
On 15 January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 landed in the Hudson River in New York
French President Charles De Gaulle opened the power station in 1966.
A demand for sea cucumbers set off a confrontation between fishermen and conservationists
In 1957, Paul Robeson used a new phone line to perform the first transatlantic concert
In 1953, a storm combined with high tides breached sea defences in the Netherlands
In 1971 Edward Carpenter discovered plastic floating about in the Atlantic Ocean
In 2012, a punk protest took place in one of Moscow's main cathedrals
In 1973, Miguel Enriquez led resistance against the dictatorship in Chile
In 1992, the US Government suspended all procedures involving silicone breast implants
Tété-Michel Kpomassie, ran away from his village in Togo and went to live in Greenland.
In 1996, Scotland played in a football match where the opposition hadn't turned up
In 1986, protests against McDonalds in Rome led to an anti-fast food revolution.
In 1958 Japanese entrepreneur, Momofuku Ando, invented instant noodles
In February 1977 the bakers of Malta went on an unprecedented strike
Chef Nelson Wang created Chicken Manchurian in 1975
In 1982, rally driver Arnaldo Cavallari created ciabatta bread in Adria, in Italy
In 2010, 33 miners were trapped underground for 69 days in the San José mine in Chile
In December 1994, Russian forces began the siege of Chechnya’s capital Grozny
When Colombia's military murdered thousands of innocent civilians
Transmitting independent broadcasts through the Iron Curtain between 1947 and 1991
The BBC's first black producer, Una Marson, and the beginnings of the Caribbean Service
In 2012, Felix Baumgartner jumped from space back to earth
Slava Zaitsev was the first designer to design high fashion pieces in the Soviet Union
Zahra Nordien returned to District Six decades after being expelled during apartheid
A woman who risked her life to hide a Russian prisoner during World War Two
In 1990, a peaceful revolution brought democracy to Mongolia
The story of the inspiration behind one of the most popular kids TV shows of all time
In 1975, the Prime Minister was sacked in Australia's biggest constitutional crisis
In 2005, the unarmed Brazilian man was shot dead by police in London
Hindu extremists demolished a mosque in the Indian city of Ayodhya
In 1995, the people of Quebec voted on whether to become independent from Canada
In 1970, feminists stormed the stage at the Miss World pageant in London
Virologist Professor Radka Argirova was the first to test people for HIV in Bulgaria
In 1947, thousands of Japanese people were taken from their island homes by Soviet troops
In 2000, an American personal trainer invented CrossFit
Journalist Kelly Hartog describes the moment terrorists targeted Israeli tourists in Kenya
In 1934, Percy Shaw invented cat's eyes, the reflective studs in the road
In 1998, Anwar Ibrahim was arrested and then jailed a year later
In 1967, Swedish traffic swapped to driving on the right-hand side of the road
Iran’s first ever minister for women’s affairs was appointed in 1975
In 1958, Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin invented the three-point safety belt for cars
Kaltham Jaber's anthology of short stories was published in 1978
A young woman who became the first female teacher in the United Arab Emirates
In 2003, a Qatari engineer came up with the idea for a robot jockey in camel racing
The tallest building in the world opened in 2010
A new country, the United Arab Emirates, was formed in 1971.
The thousands of children moved out of UK cities away from the risk of German bombs
Māori anti-racism activists disrupt the South African rugby tour of New Zealand in 1981
It has been 20 years since the controversial Dutch politician was murdered
Activist Sue Lenaerts helped start up one of the first rape crisis centres in the US
Polynesians in 1970s New Zealand fight back against dawn raids by the police
In 1975, President Habyarimana introduced Umuganda, compulsory, weekly community work
Dame Carmen Callil, who died in October this year, founded a feminist publisher in 1972
A first-hand account of the 1980s campaign against the sex-selective abortion of girls
In the 1970s, Albania’s Stalinist leader, Enver Hoxha, launched a series of purges
In 1985, a guide was written for young black men in the US who were stopped by the police
Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's career-defining speech in 2012
In 2002, Amiera Osman Hamed was put on trial after being arrested for wearing trousers
It is 20 years since Chechen rebels took an entire theatre full of people hostage
We hear what life was like during, and after the Iranian Revolution in 1979
The first ever Congress of Indigenous People of the Archipelago of Indonesia in 1999
In 1959, Cuba’s most famous ballet dancer formed Cuba’s National Ballet Company
In 1962, Fidel Castro banned professional boxing in Cuba, causing some amateurs to defect
In 1961, Fidel Castro launched a campaign aimed to eradicate illiteracy in Cuba.
The final days of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in the Pentagon and the Kremlin
The CIA expert whose job was to interpret photographs of missiles in Cuba
How the leader of a labour movement became a US civil rights hero
A strike for better work conditions became a divisive moment in South Korea's history
In 1941, the animators at Walt Disney's studios went on strike for nine weeks over pay
In 1979, British gravediggers went on strike over pay
In 1959, Claudia Jones held a Caribbean party, planting the seeds for the famous carnival
Jimmy Cliff spoke about the film that brought reggae music to the world in 1972
How the Yugoslavian president was forced from office in October 2000
Israeli solider Gilad Shalit was freed after being held hostage for more than five years
Manchester’s first racially inclusive nightclub
Brothers Adi and Rudi Dassler would go on to create global firms Adidas and Puma.
King Henry VIII's warship, The Mary Rose, was raised from the seabed in October 1982
Pablo Escobar's pet hippos were found roaming Colombian waterways in 2007
Death pardons and chasing diplomats with sticks
The Nationwide Festival of Light held by Christians protested against societal changes
On 22 September 1980 the Iran-Iraq war began, one of the bloodiest in recent history
Popes rarely left the Vatican City in the 1960s, but in 1969, Pope Paul VI visited Uganda
A student discovered fossils in 1967 helping our understanding of the world's evolution
The thousands of children moved out of UK cities away from the risk of German bombs
Witness History looks back on Queen Victoria's last days in 1901
Queen Elizabeth II first opened her home to the paying public on 7 August 1993
How a fire devastated Queen Elizabeth II's weekend home in 1992
The Coronation Derby of 1953
Two Maids of Honour at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II recall their memories
How the Fusca charmed Brazil
The murder of eight homeless children outside the Candelaria church in Rio De Janeiro
How Brazil opened a modernist capital city in 1960
In 2002 investigative journalist, Tim Lopes, was brutally killed by a Brazilian drug gang
The death of Brazil's president-elect Tancredo Neves.
The imprisonment and release of dissident poet Irina Ratushinskaya
Reform in the Soviet Union, known as Perestroika, was launched in 1987
Princess Diana dances at the White House with the star of Saturday Night Fever
The story of a Native American called Ishi who spent decades in hiding
On 16 August 2012, police shot dead 34 striking miners at a platinum mine in South Africa
In 1980 Indira Gandhi came into power in India, it became known as the "onion election"
In 1971, the US President, Richard Nixon, abandoned the Gold Standard
The first ever Gay Games were held 40 years ago
The siege of the Darayya, Syria, in which hundreds of people died
How an American economist helped save Bulgaria from financial collapse.
Rabindranath Tagore was one of India's greatest poets. He died in August 1941
The death of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru
The daughter of the last British viceroy in India remembers the transfer of power in 1947
Chandra Joashi was caught on the wrong side of the border during India's partition
Saleem was five when his family escaped to the new Muslim country of Pakistan in 1947
In June 1973, the nightclub Pacha opened in Ibiza and it changed the island forever
The Hale Bopp Comet was discovered in 1995 which resulted in advances in science
Forest fires in Indonesia caused huge damage and a dense smog across South East Asia
How campaigners fought to get ‘hen’ included in Swedish dictionaries.
On 8 August 1974, Richard Nixon became the first US president in history to resign
When Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986, he asked exiled Asians to return to Uganda.
Some 10,000 Asians made Leicester their home after being expelled from Uganda in 1972.
In 1972, dictator Idi Amin announced that all Asians had just 90 days to leave Uganda.
Many Asians migrated to Kenya in the early 20th century but were later forced to leave
In the early 20th century many South Asians migrated to Uganda in search of a better life
In 1971 communist Bob Newland goes on a secret mission to South Africa to fight Apartheid
A deadly earthquake hit the city of Tangshan killing hundreds of thousands of people.
Nicotine patches became available in the 1990s but their origins go back to the 1980s.
In 2016, Ukrainian hackers leaked the emails of Vladimir Putin's aide, Vladislav Surkov.
In 1990, a hunger strike led by Ukrainian students brought down the Soviet regime in Kyiv
In 1996, Wale Adenuga’s sitcom Papa Ajasco first hit Nigerian TV screens.
The most successful TV spy series in the USSR went on air in 1973.
The world's reaction to leading man JR, being shot in the American TV series, Dallas.
A ground breaking Indian cookery programme broadcast on the BBC launched 40 years ago.
In 1987, in Mexico City, a TV station opened a school to train telenovela actors.
The contraceptive pill was approved for use in the US in 1960, but in Japan it was 1999.
In 1951, Dr Carl Djerassi created the Pill's active ingredient from Mexican wild yams.
Tunisia became the first country in the Muslim world to legalise divorce and abortion.
In 1993 abortion laws were tightened up in Poland after the fall of Communism
The campaign to allow abortion in Great Britain which resulted in a new law in 1967.
In 1961 the first openly gay person ran for public office in the United States.
The discovery by Dr George Papanicolaou in 1928 which led to the smear test
One child's story of getting caught up in the Nigerian Civil War
In 1968 and early 1969 Japanese students fought pitched battles with riot police
The discovery of the Higgs Boson by scientists at CERN using the Large Hadron Collider
The end of a unique way of life in one of the most densely populated places in the world.
The Chinese babies left on the streets of 1960s Hong Kong in the hope they'd be adopted
The 5-19 football riot after Hong Kong won their World Cup qualifying match over China.
In 1997 Britain handed Hong Kong back to China but Emily Lau campaigned for democracy
Chris Patten remembers the day Hong Kong was handed back to China from Britain
The UK’s first official gay Pride march took place 50 years ago – on 1st July 1972.
In June 2012, Mohamed Morsi was elected in Egypt's first free presidential election.
In 1982 a Chinese-American man was murdered with a baseball bat by white men in Detroit
In 1985 the first robot-assisted medical surgery took place in Vancouver, Canada
In 2003, fertility expert Dr Nayana Patel carried out her first surrogacy procedure.
In 2009 Rob Hamill came face-to-face with the man responsible for killing his brother
It's 100 years since one of the most influential novels of the 20th century was published
A school offering specialised education for LGBT students opened in the city in 1985
It’s 50 years since Kim Phuc's village in Vietnam was bombed with napalm
A violent sectarian dispute took place outside a school in Northern Ireland in 2001
Sampat Devi started a women's rights group in India which now has a national following.
A survivor of the 2006 suicide bombing attack shares their experience.
How a network of national parks was set up to protect Gabon's forests in 2002
One of the most powerful accounts of the Holocaust was published in June 1947
The killing of the US presidential candidate remembered by a friend who was also shot
Two Maids of Honour at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II recall their memories
How UN inspectors investigated a devastating chemical weapons attack in Ghouta in 2013
A Syrian family living in Za'atari Refugee Camp for nine years share their experiences.
How a pioneering African-American journalist campaigned against lynching in the US
A survivor on how gunmen opened fire at an Israeli airport in 1972, killing 26 people.
One of the world's most famous woman artists remembered by her assistant
A landmark event for African artists was held in newly-independent Senegal in 1966
How Igor Savitsky saved thousands of works from Stalin's censors, and started a museum
The great Mexican artist remembered by a friend who lived with her at the end of her life
A British art historian on becoming a friend of the great Spanish artist in the 1950s
How a street killing in 1950s London led to Britain's first race relations inquiry
The lawyer who's spent decades tracking the fortune of the former Philippines president
A first-hand account of living through the Japanese occupation in the 1930s and 40s
The American fast-food chain was a huge hit when it opened in the Soviet Union in 1990
In 1986, four days of huge public protests brought down President Ferdinand Marcos
The bloody conflict between Moldova and Russian-back separatists in the early 1990s
How the eruption of a little-known Icelandic volcano grounded flights in Europe in 2010
How China's Communist rulers established the country's Special Economic Zones in May 1980
The Soviet colonel who realised that a warning of a US nuclear attack was a false alarm.
A first-hand account of taking on the Chinese Communist Party in the 1980s
How an Israeli scientist discovered the crucial compounds in the widely-used drug
How a young lawyer from Texas got the US abortion laws changed in 1973
British soldier Simon Weston was severely burned in an Argentine attack in 1982.
An Argentine survivor remembers being torpedoed by the British during the Falklands War.
Algerian players secretly left their French clubs to form their own national team in 1958
The bitter experiences of the fighters who opposed their own country's independence.
How French police turned on Algerian demonstrators in Paris in 1961, killing dozens.
A first-hand account of the brutal French tactics against Algerian independence fighters
Zohra Drif targeted an ice-cream parlour in Algiers during the war of independence
How workers in Manchester fought for the right to walk in the nearby countryside.
A boy caught up in the forgotten battle for Kurdish autonomy in Iran in 1979
In 1971 during the Cold War, the UK expelled 90 Soviet diplomats suspected of spying.
How women in the southern Iraqi city were persecuted for "anti-Islamic" behaviour
The programme that's let millions of EU students live and study in other countries.
How the World Wide Web was created
How the dating app with the swipe revolutionised the world of online romance
How hundreds of thousands of Greeks starved to death under Nazi occupation.
The former Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, went on trial at The Hague in 2002.
How the US and its allies backed air strikes against Serbian forces to stop atrocities.
How a catastrophic trade deal between the US and Moscow sparked a global food price shock
How Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts met up in space during the Cold War
The world held its breath in December 1979 as Soviet troops poured into Afghanistan
An Argentine conscript remembers his country's doomed military campaign in 1982.
Aravindan Balakrishnan ran a cult in London for 30 years; then two of its members fled.
How one of the Dutch artist's masterpieces was auctioned for a world record in 1987.
Aina-E-Zan, or Women's Mirror, was launched in 2002 at a time of hope for Afghan women.
It’s difficult to pinpoint the first major piece of Banksy street art, could this be it?
A decade ago protestors tried to stop the Russian leader tightening his grip on power
Artek, on the Black Sea coast, was the Soviet Union's most popular children's camp.
The mass killing of Ukrainian Jews by Nazi Germany during World War Two.
The security "assurances" offered to Ukraine after it gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994
In 1986, a reactor exploded in Soviet Ukraine causing the worst nuclear accident ever.
The building of the controversial London skyscraper, designed by Italian Renzo Piano.
The ground-breaking building was the first American museum to be designed by a woman
The vast monument built for the Shah, but now a centrepiece for protests in Iran.
How the modernist architect Le Corbusier designed a city for newly-independent India
The story of the painstaking project to rebuild Dresden's historic baroque church.
How feminists in Italy began an international campaign for payment for housework in 1972.
The Iranian human rights lawyer who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003: Dr Shirin Ebadi
The Fairlea Five were jailed in 1971 for campaigning against military conscription.
First-hand accounts of Russia's battle with another former Soviet republic in 2008.
How NTV journalists tried in vain to keep their station out of President Putin's control.
How the Russian president quit and apologised to the nation in a New Year's Eve address.
An eyewitness account of the Russian invasion of the breakaway republic in 1999
Chaos and hardship hit Russia when free-market reforms were introduced overnight in 1992
A personal account of how Russia took over the Crimean peninsula in 2014
The black Florida teenager killed by a Neighbourhood Watch volunteer while buying sweets.
The Native American soldiers who talked in a secret code, helping the Allies to victory
The historic visit by the American president which normalised US relations with China.
When 200 French sex workers took refuge in a church in Lyon, it started a movement.
In 1989, Denmark became the first country to celebrate same-sex civil unions
"Fire" was one of the first films in Indian history to depict a lesbian relationship.
Timothy Ray Brown was the first person in the world to be cured of HIV/AIDS.
For decades LGBT people in the US military had to keep their sexuality secret.
How the ground-breaking film "Marble Ass" was made amid war in the former Yugoslavia
In 1972 Burundi’s Tusti led army massacred Hutu civilians following a Hutu led uprising
Throughout the winter of 2013/14 protesters camped out in the centre of Kyiv
How the Spaniard became a legend in the world of ultra-fashionable shoes.
How the revolutionary online mapping service was created in 2005.
How the leaders of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus plotted to break up the USSR in 1991.
The trailblazing story of the first Emirati born teacher
In 2012 a rare astronomical event occurred when Venus flew past the Sun
The reporter who was killed by Islamist extremists in Pakistan while investigating 9/11.
The frantic last-minute negotiations that led to a peace deal for Northern Ireland.
How an undercover FBI agent bust an IRA gun-running operation in New York in 1981
How British paratroopers opened fired on a civil rights march in Northern Ireland in 1972
The British army was sent to keep the peace in 1969; it stayed for nearly four decades.
The story of a West German woman who crossed the Iron Curtain for love.
How a Dutch engineer invented a scheme to share bikes and cut pollution in the 1960s.
The story of Coretta Scott King’s campaign to have her late husband honoured in the US.
How a small Nigerian Islamist group launched a brutal insurgency
How a Texas woman became the first in the world to have the popular cosmetic procedure.
The dramatic story of the cruise ship which sunk in the Mediterranean, killing 32 people.
How a Malian photographer's pictures of Mali's swinging '60s and '70s amazed the world.
The secret plan to clear a huge nuclear testing site after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The man who campaigned against colonial rule, allying himself with Hitler during WW2
The leader of Mozambique's fight against colonial rule remembered by his daughter
The great French writer remembered by one of his friends and by his faithful maid.
In 1990 Albania’s communist government agreed to allow independent political parties.
The true story of one of the world's most popular board games, Monopoly.
One of the world's most popular toys was invented in a small Danish town in 1958.
In 1984 one of the most popular computer games ever was invented in Moscow.
The controversial action-adventure gaming series developed in Scotland in the 1990s.
The pioneering table tennis simulator which started the video games industry.
How Rovaniemi, a small town in Lapland, became the centre of Christmas tourism.
In 2011 thousands of protestors occupied Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain’s capital.
The Saudi women who used social media to campaign against being banned from the roads.
In 1961 the great ballet dancer stunned the world by defecting from the Soviet Union.
How Salum Barwany overcame discrimination and fear to make history in Africa
An inside account of the moment Bangladesh won independence from Pakistan in 1971.
A Pakistani soldier's account of fighting in the Bangladesh war of independence in 1971.
How Bengali women suffered appalling sexual violence during the war of independence.
How Pakistan's first elections sparked civil war and the creation of a new country
How a march in defence of Bengali galvanised demands for an independent Bangladesh.
In 2005 people across southern England woke up when a huge fuel depot exploded.
The abduction of Theo Albrecht, co-founder of the discount supermarket chain ALDI.
Why a group of British aircraft enthusiasts were arrested for spying in Greece in 2001.
How the Nazis secretly developed the first modern ballistic missile
How an Indonesian policewoman campaigned to ban intrusive examinations of female recruits
The British experimental film-maker who spoke out about Aids in the 1980s.
How activists fought successfully for cheaper Aids treatment in South Africa.
How the first successful Aids drug was developed and approved in record time in 1987
The experience of a Ugandan-born woman diagnosed with HIV in the early days of the virus.
How Gaetan Dugas was mistakenly identified as the 'patient zero' of the Aids epidemic.
Three sisters, all political activists, were murdered in 1960 in the Dominican Republic
Estonia started connecting all schools to the internet in 1996 ahead of other countries
How a Dutch doctor’s euthanasia dilemma changed the world.
The virologist who helped tackle the last smallpox outbreak in Europe
The story behind one of Klimt's most famous paintings
How Sudanese civilian protesters first brought down a military regime in 1964
How a particular form of psychotherapy became popular for treating anxiety and depression
How Serbia finally caught one of Europe's most wanted men in Belgrade in 2008.
As the first Gulf War ended, retreating Iraqi forces set light to oil wells in the desert
In November 1971, Chris Burden asked a friend to shoot him in the name of art
How the killing of a female footballer got South Africa talking about ‘corrective rape’.
At the height of the Cold War Berlin was known as the spy capital of the world.
One of the world's most famous perfumes was launched in 1921
The alternative schools for black British children set up to counter racist attitudes.
How a journalist tried to escape Eritrea's historic crackdown on critics and the press
On November 4th 1956 Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest crushing the anti-Soviet uprising
The evil criminal mastermind Fu Manchu was a recurring film character for decades
It is 75 years since verdicts were delivered on leading German Nazis at Nuremberg
The doctor who revolutionised the treatment of 'club foot' - rejecting invasive surgery
In the past 100 years, 90% of the glacial ice at the top of Kilimanjaro has disappeared
Severn Cullis-Suzuki was 12 when she spoke to world leaders at the UN Earth Summit in Rio
A scientist delivered a direct message to US politicians about climate change in 1988
Countries first tried to tackle the damage humans are doing to the planet in 1972
The US scientist who began recording carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in 1958
A media storm about lesbian mothers caused a heated national debate in 1970s Britain.
Throughout the 80s women protested against nuclear weapons which were held at the UK base
How Polish women and children found refuge in African countries during WW2
Many suspected foul play when Mozambique's socialist leader was killed in a plane crash
Sarah Jones is the first person who had made a gender change to be ordained by the C of E
American anti-abortion extremists began killing doctors in the 1990s.
In the 1980s, a horrific rape case galvanised the women's rights movement in Pakistan.
When a toddler fell down a well in Texas she became the centre of a media storm
The teacher who formed Britain's Nazi party and the antifascists who fought against them.
Saudi author Raja Alem was the first woman to win the prestigious international award
The Bermuda-born West Ham striker recalls the rampant racism in 1970s English football
The black former soldier choked to death on the floor of a British police station in 1998
How Ibrahim Ismaa'il escaped poverty in Somalia to live in the British countryside.
The stigma of growing up as a mixed race child in post-war Britain.
In 1967 Norwell Roberts became the first Black officer in the Metropolitan police
Surviving a deadly attack on a merchant ship in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war
The radical German Greens reshaped the country’s political landscape in the early 1980s
In 1996 the UK government said there was a link between BSE in cattle and CJD in humans
Claudia Andujar spent almost five decades taking unique photos of the remote Amazon tribe
How the Afghan fighters first came to power in the 1990s
Gunmen attacked a Nairobi shopping centre, the siege lasted four days in September 2013
As the latest James Bond film hits cinema screens we look at the appeal of the franchise
How one of Vladimir Putin's critics was killed in London with a radioactive substance
People flocked from all over the Americas to central Mexico in search of healing water
The journalist who revealed the affair between the Greek shipping magnate and JFK's widow
Why promotion leads to incompetence
Copenhagen’s Christiania commune was created as a radical social experiment.
In 2010 the Haitian capital was hit by a catastrophic earthquake
When DNA solved a two hundred year old French royal mystery. Did the king die or escape?
One prisoner's memories of a dramatic siege in a high security jail in the USA.
In the aftermath of September 11th, American Muslims faced increased discrimination
Just a month after 9/11, the US launched airstrikes against the Taliban and al-Qaeda
How the White House chief-of-staff broke the news of 9/11 to President George W Bush.
Two days before 9/11, al-Qaeda killed a key Afghan leader in a suicide bombing.
Throughout 2001 the US administration was being given warnings a terror attack was coming
How Kim Il-sung came to power in communist North Korea
How an anti-Mafia businessman paid the ultimate price for standing up to organised crime
When South Vietnam fell in 1975, most could not escape.
The first mass-produced modern electric car was launched by GM in 1996
A campaign to make life in Nigeria more orderly in the 1980s
Nizar Qabbani is one of the Arab world’s most famous poets but his legacy is contested
Activist Maryangel Garcia-Ramos on the struggle faced by Mexico's disabled women
How six Chinese sailors were rescued from the Titanic, but then faced racism in America.
The remarkable man who transformed 20th century economics and changed our world.
It was the first time a communist leader had been given a full state visit to the UK
A British Muslim family was among hundreds of foreign nationals held hostage in Iraq
When Gandhi was jailed in 1942 activists launched a secret radio station for independence
The desperate scramble to evacuate US personnel and locals at the end of the Vietnam war
The Holocaust survivor who coined the term genocide and spent his life trying to stop it
Vera Lengsfeld was imprisoned by the communist authorities in East Germany in 1988
The communist regime restricted many things in the GDR but not the freedom to go naked
East Germany's most famous singer-songwriter was exiled to the West in 1976
East Germans used all sorts of methods to escape from communism across the Berlin Wall
In August 1961, East Germany began building the wall that symbolised Cold War Europe
Pawan Dhall helped form the Counsel Club, one of India's first gay support groups
When the Taliban fell in 2001 Afghans could listen to music and news again
Patti Boulaye recalls frightening times as a 13-year-old girl in the Biafran War in 1967.
How a grassroots environmental movement won its fight against deforestation in India
The first African American woman to be hired as a reporter by the Washington Post
How an earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan and triggered a nuclear emergency in 2011
Why did it take so long for the oral contraceptive pill to be legalised in Japan?
A Japanese soldier hid in the jungle in Guam for nearly 30 years after World War Two
The man who invented the Karaoke machine speaks to Witness History
Japanese railways launched the fastest train the world had ever seen in October 1964
How a 13-year-old boy's life was changed by the war in Darfur in Sudan
Lisa Husby recalls running for her life from far-right extremist Anders Breivik
In 1941, Italian colonial rule in Africa ended after a last stand by Mussolini's soldiers
In 2006 Brazil passed the ground-breaking 'Maria da Penha law' to tackle domestic abuse
How six weeks of race riots gripped towns in northern England in 2001
Taliban fighters first took control of Afghanistan's capital city Kabul in 1996
How a young Englishwoman followed her dream to study chimpanzees in Africa
Kim Gordon and his parents were locked up for two years in a hotel in China in the 1960s
Inspiration, rejection and war - a personal account of the invention of the jet engine
In July 1985 the Greenpeace boat was bombed in New Zealand by French secret agents
Roma people from all around Europe met up in England in 1971
After the fall of the Soviet Union communist North Korea suffered a famine in the 1990s
When Britain went to war with Germany in 1939 it had to find somewhere to keep its wealth
Up to 50,000 Cubans were inexplicably struck down with sight loss in the early 1990s
We hear from one of the first students to study overseas after the Cultural Revolution
A small group of revolutionaries founded the Chinese Communist Party in July 1921
A play staged in Damascus undermined official propaganda after the 1967 Six Day War
Around 60 children said they saw 'aliens' near their school playground in September 1994
For decades LGBT people in the US military had to keep their sexuality secret
Thousands of gay men and lesbians in China hold fake marriages to avoid family pressure
How the sexually explicit journals of a 19th-century English lesbian came to light
In 1992, a group of LGBT Ivoirians stormed the office of a national newspaper
How a protest outside New York's Stonewall Inn inspired the modern gay rights movement.
Massive economic growth has been possible because of migrant labour, but at what cost?
The iconic East German car that dominated the roads of communist Central Europe
The documentary that changed the way British police treated women reporting rape.
Scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn pioneered a meditative approach to treat pain and depression.
Why an activist removed the Confederate flag from South Carolina's state house grounds
How the Spanish capital fell to General Franco's forces in 1939, ending a civil war
Palestinians voted to elect a new government in 2006. The outcome surprised everyone.
The emotional first performance at the newly-built Coventry Cathedral in 1962
For decades, Tunisia has had a system of legal brothels.
Israeli warplanes launched a surprise attack on the Osirak nuclear reactor in June 1981
In the 1990s, the Swiss tried radical new policy ideas, including heroin on prescription
Laila Haidari set up Kabul's first independent drug rehab centre in 2010
The Peruvian Air Force shot down a light plane carrying American missionaries in 2001
The Colombian drug lord was shot dead by police in December 1993
President Richard Nixon was the first US President to try to wipe out illegal drug use
In 1921, a white mob destroyed an affluent African-American neighbourhood.
The first charity rock concert ever held in the USSR raised money for Chernobyl survivors
Amilcar Cabral led the armed struggle against Portuguese colonial rule in West Africa
Egyptian Lotfia Elnadi made history when she gained her pilot licence in 1933
The Indian railway workers’ strike of 1974 prompted mass arrests and a state of emergency
Why a court in Sierra Leone ruled that forced marriage was a crime against humanity.
Iran hosted the first convention to save the world's wetlands in1971.
Strikes and protests against South Korea's military government came to a head in May 1980
The Israeli politician visited the compound containing one of Islam's holiest sites
How a brick wall in Beijing became a beacon for those calling for change
The trial of a South African doctor accused of multiple murders under Apartheid.
How two thousand Jews fled persecution in the summer of 1971, helped by Iraqi Kurds
Contraception wasn't easily accessible in traditionally Roman Catholic Ireland until 1985
In 1955 Christopher Mayhew MP took the hallucinogenic drug mescaline for a TV experiment
The story of wine fraudster Rudy Kurniawan, and the French winemaker who exposed him.
The pioneer of feminist science fiction and creator of the Earthsea fantasy series
Republican prisoner Bobby Sands died in the Maze prison in Northern Ireland on May 5 1981
How Amsterdam became the home of cannabis coffee shops.
The man behind the 9/11 attacks was killed by US special forces on 2 May 2011
How US special forces lost bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan in December 2001
A survivor's account of the al-Qaeda attacks in East Africa in 1998 which killed hundreds
One man's story of his journey to talk to the Al-Qaeda leader in 1996
In 1979 Islamist militants took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam
How the space shuttle Columbia revolutionised manned space exploration
How the National Rifle Association turned into a US political lobbying colossus.
How a shooting in the streets of Lahore brought US-Pakistani relations to the brink
How an ancient Native American sacred lake was finally returned to the Taos Pueblo people
In April 1961 the Nazi official who ran holocaust death camps was put on trial in Israel
An ancient matrilineal society which doesn't believe in marriage and where the women rule
South Asian vultures started dying in huge numbers in the 1990s but no one knew why.
Hear from a Cuban who fought against the US-backed exiles that invaded Cuba in April 1961
The nematode worm c. elegans has enabled all sorts of discoveries about human biology
In 1981 Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman judge at America's top court
Air raids and balloon bombs - the strange story behind the discovery of the Jet Stream
How the people of Russia's second city dropped the great communist leader's name
The BBC programme that launched the career of the famous nature broadcaster
Juana Barraza was found guilty of murdering at least eleven elderly women in Mexico city
How women in England took to the streets to protest against a serial killer
In 1967 an African American church minister began preaching that Jesus was black.
How two Englishmen were seized by Colombian rebels while crossing the lawless Darien Gap
How Mrs Thatcher shook up the Soviet media with a landmark interview in Moscow.
Prisoners at Walpole maximum security prison were in charge for three months in 1973
The death of the singer, Karen Carpenter, showed how devastating the illness could be.
The fight between Big Pharma and South Africa over the right to import cheap drugs.
Dr Ruth Westheimer first became popular on a radio show in New York in the early 1980s
The hunt for the Jamaican drug lord which left dozens of civilians dead
Protestant workers went on strike in Northern Ireland in 1974
How the 1978 World Chess Championship was overshadowed by allegations of dirty tricks
Why six men were locked inside a spacecraft on earth for 520 days
The story of Swedish social reformer, Alva Myrdal, who won the Nobel peace prize in 1982
The groundbreaking film about drag queens and LGBTQ+ people in New York
Melina Mercouri, actress turned politician, requested the marbles be returned to Greece
How feminists ended up performing abortions for women in 1960s America
She was the power behind the Chinese throne for decades
In 2011 women were at the forefront of protests calling for a change in power in Egypt
How the historic speech in March 1946 came to symbolise the beginnings of the Cold War
In 1960, South African police shot dead 69 black protestors, sparking worldwide outrage
How 11 people died when explosives were dropped on a house by a police helicopter
How a tiny Pacific Island became a limbo for asylum seekers
Don Walsh was the first to go to the very bottom of the deepest part of the ocean in 1960
Johnny Smythe was one of very few West Africans to fly with Britain's airforce during WW2
How one of Africa's most famous independence leaders was overthrown in 1966
In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis Ireland had to borrow billions
How the world woke up to the threat from acid rain
The American singer died on 8th February 2021
How the revolutionary black rights organisation started serving breakfast to children
The story of a woman who played a largely unsung role in countless medical breakthroughs
The story of Britain's forgotten slave owners and the people they enslaved
How researchers in London uncovered the story of Britain's forgotten slave owners
More than 400 civilians died when US bombs hit the Amiriya air raid shelter in Baghdad
Nurses from outside the UK form a vital part of the country's medical workforce
The 'Street News' paper was sold by homeless people in New York at a profit to earn money
In 1984 a group of lesbians and gay men organised to support striking coal-miners.
The painter Francis Bacon was known for his disturbing images and bohemian lifestyle
A medical scandal which affected millions of women around the world
Lee was charged with treason, so why did Congress reinstate his citizenship in 1975?
How a heroin epidemic among US troops in Vietnam caused panic in the military
People took to the streets of Burma, or Myanmar, to protest against military rule in 1988
The biggest circus in Soviet Russia opened in Moscow in April 1971.
The driver of the first train to take passengers from London to Paris remembers
How a singer in Tunisia helped inspire young protestors all over the Middle East in 2011
In 2011 protests soon turned into an armed revolt seeking to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi.
Inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt young Yemenis took to the streets in January 2011
The moment that hundreds of thousands of Syrians demanded change in 2011.
How social media was used to organise against Egypt's government before the Arab Spring
Anti-Sikh violence flared in India after the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984
Dr Henry Chakava made it his life's mission to publish in African languages.
The white supremacist novel by William Pierce which has been blamed for inciting violence
Adolf Hitler made his first attempt to take power in Germany in 1923
The remarkable mission to explore one of the moons of Saturn in 2005
She was the first to graduate from Oxford and was a pioneer for women lawyers in Britain.
How independence campaigners opened fire in Congress in 1954, wounding five US law-makers
Armed Civil Guards took MPs hostage in Spain's parliamentary chamber in 1981
The book describing a sudden uncontrollable downturn that was ignored by governments.
When the deadly Ebola virus broke out in West Africa scientists in the USA set to work
How three astronauts on the Skylab space station fell out with mission control
How criminals facing the death penalty in the USA found peace
Deciphering the 3,500 year-old song discovered on a clay tablet in Syria
In the 1960s the Queensland government wanted to mine and drill for oil on the reef
The modernist architect Le Corbusier agreed to build a 'city of the future' in India
One of the largest dams in the world, the Aswan High Dam in Egypt was completed in 1970
How UNESCO fought racism and advocated tolerance.
A former Hollywood child star remembers filming the classic Christmas movie in 1946.
The early days of the studio which brought Japanese animation to a global audience
An actor's memories of working with the Bengali director on the classic Apu trilogy
The real story behind the heart-warming musical released in 1965
Charlie Chaplin's classic satirical film about Adolf Hitler was released in 1940
At Christmas 1979 hundreds of Namibian children were taken to East Germany
How a Spanish blockade of the disputed British territory ended in December 1982.
The first British fly-on-the-wall documentary series aired on the BBC in 1974.
Pakistan's first democratic elections led to the creation of a new country, Bangladesh
American entertainer Bing Crosby made 'White Christmas' one of the defining songs of WW2
Why beavers were officially reintroduced to the UK 400 years after they were wiped out
A remarkable discovery in a cave at Bruniquel in southern France in 1990
Albert Luthuli was the first African to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
How a German filmmaker, Arnold Fanck, shot films high in the mountains in the 1920s
The African-American crime writer Chester Himes first found widespread success in France
How the first of the Nazi's new "revenge weapons" terrorised Londoners in WW2
The first successful slave uprising in modern times, it prompted the abolition of slavery
A law banning religious clothing from French state schools came into effect in 2004
Dr Naziha Al-Dulaimi was the first woman to hold a ministerial office in the Arab world
In 1991 a Tigrayan-led rebel movement took power in Addis Ababa ending years of war
The wheelchair warriors who brought London to a standstill to make their point
In 2012, Rwanda's sitting volleyball team became their country's first Paralympians
How activists forced through the first law to help tens of millions of disabled Indians
For decades disabled people in the UK were offered tiny, three-wheeled cars for transport
The deaf and blind American writer who became famous around the world
Why Anwar Sadat became the first Egyptian president to visit Israel in November 1977
The story of a radical book about women’s health and sexuality.
How nearly a thousand Jewish refugees were housed in an old fort near New York during WW2
In 1960 Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka became the world's first woman Prime Minister
Captain Colin Darch and his crew were held hostage by pirates for 47 days in 2008
Donald Winnicott helped mothers understand babies through psychoanalysis in the 1940s.
An international committee of astronomers agreed Pluto wasn't really a planet in 2006
Rare recordings of African veterans of WW1 in East Africa
The creation of a communication system for people with learning difficulties in the 1970s
The women who launched an anonymous poster campaign against sexism and racism in art.
Reconstructing Dresden's historic baroque church.
How a meeting in Manchester shaped the post-war struggle against colonialism
The Israeli PM was shot by an extremist opposed to the peace process on November 4th 1995
Growing up as a black child in post-war Germany
In 1969 a theatrical revue called Oh Calcutta opened. It featured male and female nudity.
How former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card broke news of 9/11 to President Bush
How US religious conservatives organised in the 1970s to get Republicans elected.
The investigation that led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon in 1974.
The pioneering politician who launched a run for the US presidency in 1972.
The US election of 1960 was a close race between John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon.
The mathematicians who worked behind the scenes on the American space programme
How a South African team is searching for those who disappeared during apartheid rule
How mistakes with the initial production of polio vaccine made thousands of children ill.
The working class woman who shook up the British theatre establishment
In the grip of a drugs crisis, the country took a radical approach in 2001.
Behind the scenes at the Iraqi-funded, Clash of Loyalties
The landmark legislation was introduced to ensure the rights of African Americans to vote
Many of the nomadic herders in Kazakhstan left the USSR and moved to China in the 1920s
On October 13th 1990 the fifteen year long conflict in Lebanon finally came to an end
1980 saw the launch of the first TV station dedicated to 24 hour news.
How anti-racists stopped a far-right march in South London in 1977.
The story of our times told by the people who were there.
New laws were used to stop clubs from banning black and ethnic minority people in 1978
Yvonne Conolly was made head of a London primary school in 1969.
A ship carrying hundreds of migrants from the Caribbean set sail for Britain in 1948
The summer house by a lake which witnessed much of Germany's 20th century history
Three gray whales got caught in the ice off Alaska in October 1988
In 1998 the world's most popular search engine was launched by two PHD students
A trial which shone a light on links between Italian politicians and the Mafia
The charismatic Egyptian president dominated Arab politics for almost two decades
The US presidential election of 2000 was one of the closest and most contested in history
How US private security guards opened fire on civilians in Baghdad, killing 17 people
Shortly after his release from prison the South African freedom fighter toured the USA
Hoe Liberia negotiated to write off billions of dollars of debt.
A mission to study the planet Jupiter finally came to an end on 21st September 2003
The women who began protesting after their children were taken away by soldiers
A photo of a man confronting a tank in China caught the world's imagination in 1989
In the 1950s rebels took up arms to rid Kenya of colonial rule
Exiled dissident Nikolai Khalezin on the origins of the protest movement in Belarus
After WW2 US President Harry Truman argued for healthcare for all but his plan failed.
Punyavathi Sunkara recalls how the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh banned alcohol in 1995.
In 2005 two young graduates created one of the internet's most popular websites.
Barbara Mensch recalls how she was hijacked and held in Jordan in 1970
Haiti was cholera-free until UN peacekeepers brought it to the Caribbean country in 2010
In the 1990s Britain closed down many of its long-stay hospitals and asylums
In the late 1990s there were more than 150 bomb attacks in the South African city
The portable tape player that brought music-on-the-move to millions was launched in 1979
How a British Airways jumbo jet flew through a volcanic ash cloud and survived
How author and former intelligence officer Ian Fleming created the British super-spy
The decision that quashed a key part of an electoral law designed to protect black voters
The remote Scottish islands whose last inhabitants were evacuated in August 1930
How former policeman Ray Lewis joined the anti-inequality demonstrations in New York
How Jeannie Leavitt became the first woman to fly a US Air Force fighter plane in 1993.
The trades union activist and politician who fought for Nigerian independence.
An 11-day standoff between a fugitive and the US government ended with three people dead.
How Beate Sirota Gordon got wording on gender equality into Japan's post-war constitution
How American doctors carried out secretive STD experiments in Guatemala in the 1940s
Millions of people’s lives have been saved and improved by the metered dose inhaler.
How archaeologists discovered the lost grave of King Richard III under a car park
The memories of a young Iraqi woman who grew up in the dictator's inner social circle
How a polio epidemic in Denmark in 1952 led to the invention of the modern ventilator
How Turkish campaigners forced a radical change in the law on crimes against women
How the Lebanese Civil War came to Beirut's luxury hotel district in 1975.
How the German city addressed its colonial past by rededicating a famous monument
How British women operated secret radar technology during World War Two
Atomic bombs were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945
How a huge naval battle between aircraft carriers changed the war in the Pacific
During World War Two thousands of Japanese Americans were sent to prison camps
A first-hand account of the surprise strike on a US naval base in December 1941.
The leading Nazi was caught by British troops shortly after WW2 had ended in Europe
The story of the mayor who created one of the world's biggest holiday resorts.
A remarkable story of survival, alone in a life-raft adrift in the Atlantic ocean
How 400 separate bushfires burnt their way across Victoria, Australia in 2009.
Remembering the pioneering Cuban-American playwright and agony aunt, Dolores Prida
How a five-year-old girl helped her father create a record-breaking vaccine
Mary Akrami set up the first refuge for women fleeing violence and abuse in Afghanistan
When logging threatened the rainforests of Sarawak, local communities fought back
On 16th October 1995 hundreds of thousands of black American men marched on Washington DC
On 20th July 1944 Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg put a bomb under Adolf Hitler's desk
A so-called Social Purification project led to thousands of citizens being imprisoned
How the British city forced out Chinese seamen who'd served during World War Two.
The Stele of Axum, a 4th century Ethiopian treasure, was returned by Italy in 2005
Holidaymakers arrived at the first Club Med resort in Majorca in summer 1950
A Jewish feminist group's campaign to pray freely at the Western Wall in Jerusalem
A US government report into the riots of 1967 blamed white racism for creating ghettos
In July 1954 the great Mexican artist died after years of illness. She was just 47.
When the city's police force went on strike there was looting and rioting in the streets.
The black former soldier choked to death on the floor of a British police station in 1998
How Dr John Snow found out the cholera bug was spread through contaminated water in 1854.
In 1990, South Africa banned skin-lightening creams containing hydroquinone
How a secret collection of art missing since Nazi rule was found in Germany in 2012
The life of a nine-year-old girl quarantined in a TB sanatorium for 4 years in the 1950s
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards went on trial for drugs offences in June 1967
A people’s movement brought an end to Nepal’s absolute monarchy in 1990.
Chaos and hardship hit Russia with the sudden market reforms of early 1992.
Thinkers trained in free-market economics in Chicago shaped Chile after its military coup
In the 1960s Tanzania tried out a new form of socialism called Ujamaa
How a poor, war-ravaged nation became a global economic powerhouse
How the USA used public spending projects to battle through the Great Depression
A teacher decided to separate pupils according to eye colour to teach them about racism.
The passenger train service between India and Bangladesh was resumed after 43 years.
Whistle-blowers implicated UN peacekeepers in sex trafficking in Bosnia in the late 90s
Chairman Mao banned all classical music in 1966, but some musicians defied the order.
The remarkable Swiss psychiatrist who changed the way we think about dying.
One man's experience of the controversial US law that saw thousands locked up for life
People rioted in Los Angeles after police who had assaulted a black man were acquitted
How an all-black college team overturned racist assumptions about basketball in the USA
Four young black girls were killed in a racist attack on a church in Alabama in 1963
A landmark case about racial segregation in the USA.
How Northern Irish doctor Frank Pantridge revolutionised heart-attack treatment.
How the cold war helped shape the creation of the WHO and what role China played.
The artist who delighted post-Cold War Berlin by wrapping its greatest monument
Just one month after gaining independence there was an uprising in Zanzibar in 1964.
How Costa Rica's Monteverde cloud forest reserve became a major tourist site
Ann Lowe designed Jackie Kennedy's wedding dress but for years few people knew her name
Winston Churchill's personal doctor published his memories of the British leader in 1966
The South Korean army crushed a popular uprising in the city of Gwangju on 27 May 1980
The book that highlighted the health and environmental benefits of a plant based diet
How criminals from looters to con artists thrived in London during the Blitz.
One scientist's ground-breaking work that revolutionised our understanding of autism
The creator of the 3D printer had no idea how revolutionary this technology might become.
How Hong Kong’s city within a city was torn down in 1993.
After four white policemen were acquitted of killing a black man - Miami rioted in 1980
Could farting fish have triggered Sweden's Cold War submarine hunts?
How Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands broke his silence to reveal a love child
It took until 1999 for Japanese women to be allowed to take the contraceptive pill.
When a free helpline for kids was set up it showed just how widespread child abuse was
The only part of the British Isles to be occupied during WW2 was liberated in May 1945
After Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies in May 1945 'Victory in Europe' was declared
After Germany's surrender to Allied forces in May 1945, Soviet soldiers occupied Berlin
Eyewitness accounts of the final battle for the capital of Nazi Germany in 1945
First-hand accounts of Hitler's death from the BBC's archives
An exhibition about the German army’s role in WW2 caused a scandal in 1995.
Trees which survived the atomic bomb in Hiroshima are still growing in the Japanese city
How fishermen and conservationists battled in the species-rich waters of the archipelago
The first Middle East mediator, Count Bernadotte, was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948
In 1957 a new strain of flu emerged in East Asia and quickly spread around the world
The transgender Indonesians who fought for their rights in the 1970s and 1980s
The great American playwright revealed a lot about himself in BBC interviews
The development of a ventilation system that was a precursor to modern ventilators.
Abdul Sattar Edhi built one of the biggest welfare charities in the world
A woman who died in the US in 1940 was captured and enslaved in West Africa as a child
A deadly explosion on a drilling rig led to an environmental disaster in the US
Michael Foale was on board the Mir space station when a resupply vessel crashed into it.
The space station which was meant to break up and fall into the sea but instead hit land
In 1972 the American space agency NASA carried out its final Moon mission
The touchscreen smartphone changed mobile technology for ever.
The women who led the way in America's space programme by spending two weeks underwater
How a 72-year-old grandmother started online shopping before the internet
The world's first webcam went online in 1993. Its camera was focused on a coffee pot.
A group of Californian computer enthusiasts first began meeting to share ideas in 1975.
It has never been easy to practice a religious faith in communist China
A Swedish warship, Vasa, sank in the 17th century but was raised from the seabed in 1961
A former British governor of Punjab was shot in 1940 as revenge for killings in Amritsar
Could the biggest living organism on earth be a colony of quaking aspen trees?
Rose Heilbron was a trailblazer for women in the legal profession in Britain.
In 1985 activists made a giant quilt to commemorate those killed by AIDS in the USA.
On March 26th 2010 a South Korean naval ship sank after an explosion - 48 sailors died
In March 2015 Saudi Arabia and its allies began an intense aerial bombardment of Yemen
Over 50 million people are thought to have died from influenza around the world in 1918
How scientists in the 1970s discovered an anti-malarial drug using a traditional remedy.
How NASA put an orbiting observatory into space in 1990.
How a virus created by a Filipino college dropout sparked global panic in May 2000
How a British army officer saved Hitler's Volkswagen Beetle at the end of World War Two
Former actress Marsha Hunt remembers the anti-Communist witch-hunt of the late 1940s.
The story of a landmark ruling for women's rights in the United States.
A deadly new disease infected laboratory workers in a small town in West Germany in 1967.
How the world battled a deadly respiratory disease in 2003.
Scientists in the US led by Dr Jonas Salk develop an effective vaccine against polio
The first documented outbreak of the deadly disease occurred in the 1970s in Zaire
In 1918 an extremely deadly form of influenza killed millions around the world
One man's stand against the psychiatric abuse of political dissidents in the Soviet Union
How South Asian women workers won the support of the British trade unionist movement
The EU finally banned lead in petrol in 2000 - decades after the US, Canada and Japan.
Japan faces a demographic time-bomb. Could the answer be Womenomics?
The diplomacy behind the release of three US citizens who unknowingly hiked into Iran.
Thousands of people died in the world's last major smallpox epidemic in India in 1974.
A group of Californian nuns left their convent and set up their own community in 1970
The American inventor who made the first mobile phone and the first mobile phone call
Human remains were found on a remote island in Antarctica in 1985 but whose were they?
A 1980s campaign to preserve Antarctica for science.
Building the largest gun in the world for Saddam Hussein's Iraq
"Battle Bus" was a sculpture in memory of Nigerian environmentalist Ken Saro Wiwa
In 2002, a landmark study on Buddhist monks showed that meditation can alter the brain.
How the Voyager space probe captured a famous image of Earth as it left the Solar System.
The best-selling dating handbook was published on Valentine's Day 1995
Erica Jong's best-selling book about sex, creativity and love, published in 1973
A shocking account of the realities of the slums of São Paulo
The man who spotted the potential of the boy wizard books in 1996
How the thoughts of China's communist leader became an unexpected global best-seller
The day that South Africa's anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela was freed
How a small Californian tribe won the right for Indian communities to host gambling.
In the 1980s deaf children in Nicaragua invented a completely new sign language
The Empress Dowager Cixi ruled for 47 years until her death in 1908.
Norwell Roberts endured years of racist abuse within the Metropolitan police
The document which formed the basis for what is now the European Union was signed in 1957
Madam C. J. Walker was born to former slaves and created a black beauty business.
A tree in Kew Gardens survived the storm of 1987 and revolutionised gardening.
The overhaul of India's rape laws followed the fatal gang rape of a student in Delhi.
The Way Ahead group was set up in the 1990s to make Britain’s monarchy more relevant
Since 1975, San Diego Zoo has been deep-freezing cell samples from rare species
In the 1960s whales were being hunted to extinction.
Silent Spring examined the effect of pesticides on the environment
A flightless bird, the dodo was extinct just decades after being discovered by Europeans
How scientists discovered that a deadly fungus was killing off amphibians.
The US tracked down the al-Qaeda leader to a city in northern Pakistan in 2011
How a 14-year-old boy became the youngest person executed in the USA in the 20th century
The female negotiator who agreed a deal with Muslim rebels in the Philippines.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall East German citizens stormed the secret police HQ
How some of the great stately homes of Britain were saved from demolition and decay
A US Marine's account of the massive operation against Iraqi insurgents in 2004
In 2009, Uruguay became the first country to give every schoolchild a laptop computer.
The killing of the man who'd become a powerful symbol of the fight to save the Amazon
In January 1990 over 100 000 Hindus fled the Kashmir valley
The memories of a survivor of Nazi atrocities in the final months of the war in Europe
How the communist secret police, the Stasi, tried to crush a youth subculture.
Desmond's was the most successful black sitcom in British TV history
The Limits to Growth was published in 1972 and suggested global decline from 2020
The UN's top negotiator Alvaro de Soto recalls his part in bringing peace to El Salvador
The male stripper troupe was founded in Los Angeles in 1979
In December 1972 the US military launched its heaviest bombardment of Hanoi.
The ground-breaking circus was formed by a group of street performers in Quebec in 1984.
The true story of one of the world's most popular board games, Monopoly.
On 24 December 1979 Soviet troops started pouring into Afghanistan
Pioneering work in the 60s into combination chemotherapy to try to find a cure for cancer
Why Nigeria built a brand new capital city from scratch.
Why the mysterious loss of honey bees in the US triggered a global panic.
In December 1989 a wave of protests finally deposed communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu
How Indian women fought for the right to be allowed into a Hindu holy site
How soldiers who had been relegated to support roles were asked to volunteer for combat
In December 2001 armed men attacked India's parliamentary compound in broad daylight
When New York police shot a young immigrant 41 times, thousands took to the streets
In December 1975, the IRA took a middle-aged couple hostage in Central London.
How Paris was eventually won round to the Louvre museum's great glass pyramid
In 1990 Reinaldo Arenas died of Aids in New York, leaving behind a powerful autobiography
A prison camp in the Uzbek desert became notorious for torture and human rights abuses.
Henry Moore revolutionised sculpture by creating immense works and setting them outside.
How a doomed Antarctic expedition in 1914 became a legendary story of survival
The Colombian drug trafficker was shot dead by police on December 2nd 1993
Robert R was a teenager who died of an undiagnosed illness in Missouri in 1969
In 1985 Australia's famous natural landmark Uluru was returned to aboriginal ownership
How the Lyons catering company pioneered LEO, the first electronic office system
In the 1990s India began to open up its state-controlled economy
American scientist Dennis Klatt pioneered synthesised speech using his own voice.
How Wilfred Thesiger travelled in one of the world's harshest environments in the 1940s.
India's capital city built a Metro to tackle its traffic and air pollution problems
Lucia Cerna was the only witness to a murder that shocked El Salvador in November 1989
How one of Klimt's most famous paintings was returned to the family who'd owned it
Why Los Angeles police began using a new weapon in the early 1980s.
Reita Faria was the first Indian to win the Miss World beauty competition in 1966
How the Love Canal neigbourhood in the US came to symbolise the dangers of toxic waste
How Hindu extremists demolished a mosque in India prompting months of communal violence
Why a captain was arrested after saving shipwrecked Africans in the Mediterranean in 2004
The British war poet's younger brother Harold Owen spoke to the BBC in the 1960s
The 1987 rock concert that led to the first shouts in East Berlin of 'the wall must go'
How Indian police tortured petty criminals, blinding them permanently
How sex, jazz and 'fake news' were used to undermine the Nazis in World War Two
How a Canadian oncologist proved the effectiveness of breast-conserving surgery
How Iranian students invited a group of Americans to Iran to meet the hostages
The 1960s campaigners who fought the government to save the world's biggest coral reef.
An underground feminist network performed illegal abortions in 1960s Chicago.
When Algeria won independence in 1962 thousands of local French allies faced persecution
The Hotel Lutetia became a reception centre for French Holocaust survivors after WW2
The British Prime Minister started expressing doubts about the European Union in 1988
The border between communist East Germany and the West opened on November 9th 1989
The Berlin Wall fell just a month after mass protests in the East German city of Leipzig
Thousands of East Germans sought refuge in the West German embassy in Prague in 1989.
The body of Imre Nagy who had led the Hungarian Uprising was reburied in 1989
The Polish trade union organisation was banned by the communists until April 1989
Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai fought to save forests and protect human rights
A reactor caught fire at the Windscale nuclear plant in the north of England in 1957
Dr Norman Borlaug’s pioneering work on disease-resistant grains saved millions.
How Mexico City cut its dangerously high air pollution levels
An American scientist began recording carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in 1958
The stigma of growing up as a mixed race child in post-war Britain
How British black activists fought for employment rights in the 1960s
Inter-racial violence broke out in west London in the summer of 1958
In 1987 Diane Abbott became the first black woman to be elected to the British Parliament
The great West Indian cricketer who fought against racism in the UK
How China's Communist rulers established the country's first Special Economic Zones
How workers and students filled the colony's streets, pressing for an end to British rule
We hear from one man who took part in China's brutal Cultural Revolution.
China's legendary Communist leader in the words of an American who knew him well
On 1 October 1949 Chairman Mao declared China a communist state
The fatal goring of the legendary bullfighter Francisco Rivera Pérez - "Paquirri".
In September 2008, the world's biggest science experiment was switched on.
How one historian living in Mosul took aim at the Islamic State group on the internet.
Theodor Wonja Michael was a child when Hitler came to power in Germany.
The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical was performed on stage before it became a movie.
The distinguished art historian was exposed as a former Soviet spy in the autumn of 1979.
The first book in CS Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia series was published in autumn 1950
The revolutionary Black Panther Party provided free breakfasts for local schoolchildren.
Until 2011 LGBT service people in the US armed forces had to keep their sexuality secret
Ethiopia sent soldiers to fight alongside the United Nations during the Korean War
In 1519, the Portuguese explorer set off on the first circumnavigation of the globe.
How the timber industry fuelled a brutal civil war in West Africa.
Why guaranteeing government jobs to lower caste Hindus led to weeks of student protests.
One of the most successful TV comedy shows of all time hit US screens in September 1994
How the deposed Honduran president spent months holed up in the Brazilian embassy
In 1991 Libero Grassi was killed in Sicily for publicly refusing to pay protection money.
The libel case that put history itself in the dock in 2000
Apollo 11's doctor tells how NASA tried to protect Earth from possible lunar alien life
The UN deployed its first all-female peacekeepers in Liberia in 2007.
On September 1st 1939 German troops invaded Poland. Cameraman Douglas Slocombe was there.
The first conviction of a paedophile using hand analysis.
The great African-American jazz singer moved to West Africa in 1974.
How thousands of unaccompanied children were sent to safety by their desperate parents
How young women began disappearing in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez in 1993
In 1955, Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago, was brutally murdered in Mississippi
How the influential Brazilian leader took his own life rather than submit to the military
Wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone decades after they were wiped out in the US.
A former member of the French resistance remembers the drama of August 1944
The search for hundreds of children kidnapped by the Salvadoran army during the civil war
In 1998 a transponder was implanted into the body of British scientist, Kevin Warwick.
The Dr Seuss books revolutionised reading in America in the 1950s.
How the CIA tracked down one of the world's most wanted men
Throughout 2001 the US authorities were given warnings that a terror attack was imminent
How the contact lens became cheap enough to throw away after a day
The October 1947 crisis which led to the partition of Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
How a British warship escaped from Chinese Communists on the Yangtze river in 1949
In August 1969 the British Army was deployed on the streets of Londonderry
How Britain pioneered Community Service as an alternative to prison in the 1970s
In 1958 the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus travelled under the North Pole.
How thousands of French families fled from Algeria as it won independence
Thousands of Iraqi troops and tanks began pouring into Kuwait on 2 August 1990
On August 1st 1944, Polish resistance fighters rose up against German occupying forces
The eight year protest campaign which stopped a nuclear plant at Wackersdorf in Germany.
A huge hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold was discovered in southern England in 1939.
The weapons inspector's death deepened the row over the UK's part in the invasion of Iraq
A fossilised skull found in Chad is thought to be the earliest-known ancestor of humans
When Tunisia introduced divorce, abortion and votes for women ahead of much of the world.
The car accident involving US Senator Edward Kennedy which left a young woman dead
How LGBT people in China started arranging fake marriages to hide their sexuality
The story of the hit musical Mamma Mia! from the woman who created it
A failed attempt to search for signs of life on Mars
The Moon mission that almost ended in tragedy after an explosion on board the spaceship.
In July 1969, Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the Moon.
The Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to be sent into space
The Russian stray was the first dog to be sent into orbit around the earth
How a dramatic bonfire in Nairobi National Park highlighted the threat from poaching
Four army officers were sentenced to death for drug trafficking by the Castro government
The remarkable UK research centre where thousands went on holiday to catch a cold
Women in China got access to tampons for the first time in 1985
The secret diaries of 19th-century Englishwoman Anne Lister, the 'first modern lesbian'
How a group of senior, indigenous Australian women fought to save their land.
The advent of music on the move in July 1979
The Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, starting their four year genocidal rule.
Two German left-wing activists recall their ordeal as hostages of Nicaragua's Contras
How Supreme Court nominee Judge Clarence Thomas was publicly accused of sexual misconduct
The lawyer of serial killer Rosemary West recalls the gruesome details of the case
How a protest outside New York's Stonewall Inn inspired the modern gay rights movement.
Saddam Hussein's war on the Kurds in the 1980s
The story behind Joseph Heller's acclaimed, satirical anti-war novel which sold millions
The National Association to Aid Fat Americans, NAAFA, held its first meeting in June 1969
How violinist Yehudi Menuhin and yoga teacher BKS Iyengar helped bring yoga to the West
Sister Lotus was an unlikely online celebrity because she was famous for being ordinary.
The American civil rights activist and war hero who was murdered in 1963 in Mississippi.
One of the most influential figures in psychoanalysis died in June 1961
How a young woman became a symbol of anti-government protest in Iran
One gay couple in Minneapolis had a same-sex wedding back in the 1970's
How an American war hero was sent to stop China becoming communist and failed.
How a huge public art project entranced post-Cold War Berlin
How a 1950s drug helped revolutionise the treatment of mental illness
Hundreds of thousands of Kosovans fled when NATO began bombing former Yugoslavia in 1999
A Nepalese regiment of the British army won the right to settle in Britain in 2009.
How the BBC reported the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France, 6 June 1944
The mystery surrounding the death of the author of the world famous children's tale
Eyewitness accounts of the Allied landings in Normandy during WW2 on 6 June 1944.
Archaeologists uncovered perfectly preserved domestic Viking life in York in the 1970s
Andrew Weinreich founded the first online social network in 1997.
The inside story of one of the most popular children's TV shows ever made
Dan Wang was the most wanted student leader after the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.
How protests by young people led to Jean-Bédel Bokassa's fall from power in C.A.R
The man who led India to independence died on May 27th 1964
The Bangladesh charity dedicated to treating the survivors of acid attacks.
The story of how environmental campaign group Greenpeace was formed
When MPs tried to toughen the laws against homosexuality, LGBT activists took a stand.
The Chicxulub impact crater was discovered in 1978.
Three friends set off on an epic trek along the Great Wall of China in May 1984
During WW2 the Nazis abducted blonde blue-eyed children to build an Aryan master race
The Chinese Communist Party started ruthlessly enforcing birth control in the early 1980s
How the army finally crushed Tamil Tiger rebels after 25 years of bloody civil war
The economists who predicted the 2008 financial crash but whose warnings were ignored
The road between Pakistan and China took 20 years to complete
One of the most successful TV formats in the world started back in May 2004
The first 'war on drugs' was launched by US President Richard Nixon in 1971.
The groundbreaking school of art and design was founded in 1919
The French surrender at the siege of Dien Bien Phu ended their colonial rule of Vietnam
The Chinese billionaire set up his online shopping site in 1999
The struggle against a Communist insurgency in Malaya in the 1950s
The Argentine ship was sunk by a British submarine during the Falklands war
Why a boy ran away from West Africa to live in the Arctic in the 1960s.
The English poet whose death at the start of World War One was mourned by millions
Ellen DeGeneres came out as a lesbian on primetime American television in April 1997.
A record series of arms sales by the UK to Saudi Arabia began in the 1980s
The assassination of newspaper editor, Lasantha Wickramatunga, in 2009 shocked the world
After Apartheid all South Africans regardless of race finally won the right to vote.
The Vegan Society was established in 1944 by British 'non-dairy vegetarians'
A survivor from the April 1999 bombing in Belgrade that killed 16 people.
13 people were killed and more than 20 injured in the school shooting on April 20th 1999
Worries about the industrialisation of farming post-WW2 led some farmers to go organic.
Gustav Metzger and the birth of the radical new art form in the 1960s
'A Raisin in the Sun' by Lorraine Hansberry had an almost exclusively black cast too.
In April 2001 an American multi-millionaire paid Russia to send him into space
In the 1960's American diners began to worry that Chinese food was making them ill.
The consolidation of the BJP as one of the major powers in Indian politics.
The wingsuit is the ultimate in extreme sports clothing, for BASE jumpers and skydivers
In April 1919 British Indian troops opened fire on protestors in the city of Amritsar
Choreographer Jack Cole had a huge influence on musical theatre and Hollywood films
Maya Angelou's iconic memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was published in 1969
Costa Rica dissolved its Armed Forces after a brief civil war in 1948
The discovery of a 17th century Swedish warship, the Vasa, in near perfect condition
A therapy which seems to work for post-traumatic stress was developed in the late 1980s
In April 1974 the heiress announced she supported her kidnappers' beliefs
Scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn pioneered a meditative approach to treat pain and depression.
How former UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim's secret Nazi past was exposed
The record-breaking balloon flight
Prime Minister Jim Callaghan's desperate attempts to survive a no-confidence vote in 1979
A female designer working for a pharmaceutical company came up with the idea in the 1960s
Viktor Orban, now the populist Hungarian Prime Minister led a democratic movement in 1988
How a British doctor misled the world by linking the MMR vaccine with autism.
How an accidental discovery in Mexico led to the uncovering of the Aztecs´ Great Temple.
Soviet citizens voted in democratic elections for the first time in March 1989.
How the Dutch art collector Pieter Menten was exposed as a war criminal in the 1970s
In the 1950s, US engineers were sent to Afghanistan to build a dam.
In March 1969, American author Kurt Vonnegut published his cult anti-war novel.
Chinese scientists used ancient traditional medicine to find a cure for malaria.
A spoof TV show persuaded some Russians that Lenin took too many hallucinogenic mushrooms
Life under Japanese occupation in Singapore during World War Two.
Yvonne Conolly was appointed head of Ringcross Primary school in North London in 1969
Melina Mercouri asked Britain to return the Parthenon marbles removed by Lord Elgin.
How Nicaragua's president was accused of sexual abuse by his step-daughter
Hear from the woman who created the most famous doll in the world.
Sayeeda Warsi was appointed to the coalition government's Cabinet in May 2010
On March 1st 1989 Icelanders were allowed to buy beer for the first time in decades
Armed left-wing extremists fought off Japanese police in the mountains in February 1972
Nine people died when a cargo door opened mid-flight over the Pacific in February 1989
A highly infectious virus appeared in Mexico in 2009 and rapidly spread round the world
The boom and bust years of "Saudi" Venezuela in the 1970s
A panel of scientists went to Brazil to identify the remains of the infamous Nazi in 1985
When doctors said cigarette smokers were dying prematurely the UK government did little.
One woman's battle against the toxic legacy of the Vietnam War
The US space shuttle disintegrated on its way back to Earth on February 1, 2003.
The student massacre in México portrayed in Alfonso Cuarón's award-winning movie.
In 1992 European ministers signed a treaty towards greater economic and political unity.
How a homeless Russian drunk wrote a secret classic
The 1961 vote lies at the heart of the violent conflict in Cameroon's Anglophone region
Two of the first female airline pilots in the US remember their struggle
The man who jailed 40 top bankers in Iceland after the 2008 global credit crunch
The people of Baghdad faced death when the US and its allies began their invasion of Iraq
The first Disney theme park in Europe took years of negotiations to get off the ground.
A former schoolgirl remembers the demonstration that sparked an uprising in South Africa.
How the Marxist revolutionary was captured and killed in Bolivia.
A first-hand account of Hitler from one of his secretaries who was there at the very end
Many women supported Iran's 1979 Revolution but some later became disillusioned
The US sent special forces to try to rescue hostages from their Embassy in Tehran in 1980
Barry Rosen was one of the Americans held hostage for 444 days in Tehran.
In February 1979 an Islamic revolution began when Iran's exiled religious leader returned
How Iran's state employed musicians started recording revolutionary songs.
Virago Press opened as a feminist publisher in 1972 to promote women's writing
Pope John XXIII wanted to modernise the Catholic Church, reforms took place in the 1960s.
The British comic film franchise which found fans around the world
In the late 1990s a businessman started a new industry in India
How one of the most notorious murderers in Edwardian London was captured
In January 2006, millions of Londoners were entranced by the appearance of a whale.
South Asian women led a strike against poor working conditions in a British factory.
Thousands of people flocked to the village of Tlacote hoping to be cured by magical water
The world famous singer's final performances were in London in January 1969
Susie Orbach's book led people to rethink body-image from a feminist perspective
The poor black single mother who stunned Brazil with a book about her life in 1960.
Hundreds of Soviet doctors were imprisoned or shot in the last year of Stalin's rule.
The end of the US-backed dictator and the start of communist rule in Cuba in January 1959
In 2008, the first global seed vault was opened to safeguard the world's crops
The Canadian discovery that proved Vikings had crossed the Atlantic 1000 years ago
The vast building that symbolised the excesses of Romania's brutal former dictator
The romantic fiction writer is thought to have sold hundreds of millions of books
In 1987 thousands of tin cans full of marijuana washed up on the beaches in Rio.
The storming of the El Paraiso base by Marxist rebels in December 1983.
In December 1943, a British charity created gallantry medals for animals serving in war.
Meet the trautonium, the early electronic instrument promoted by the Nazis.
At Christmas 1980 strange objects and lights were seen over a military base in England.
On Christmas Eve 1950 four students took the 'Stone of Destiny' from Westminster Abbey
How a passenger helped subdue shoe-bomber Richard Reid on an American Airlines flight.
Writer PL Travers created a children's classic when she invented a magical nanny.
Scientists at MIT in the 1960s had to share computer time - but some people wanted more.
Theatre director Peter Brook led a troupe of actors across the Sahara desert in 1972
Japanese troops reached the Chinese city of Nanjing in December 1937.
Japanese Americans win an apology and compensation for World War II internment.
How Britain sent dozens of Dutch agents to their deaths in Nazi-occupied Netherlands
The British woman who revolutionised the treatment of dying patients around the world.
How the first mission to orbit the Moon captured the world's imagination in December 1968
China had to open up its strict communist system to join the World Trade Organisation
Angela Merkel rose to power in German politics after the fall of her mentor, Helmut Kohl.
Ramiro Osorio Cristales was five when his family was massacred by the Guatemalan army.
A catastrophic earthquake hit northern Armenia on December 7th 1988, hear from a survivor
On 4 December 1977 Jean-Bédel Bokassa was crowned Emperor of the Central African Republic
At the end of WW2 much of Germany's capital had been destroyed. Women helped clear it up.
In November 1994, Norwegians voted in a referendum not to join the European Union
The fossil find in 1923 in Mongolia helped to prove that dinosaurs hatched their young.
In 1982, Terrence Higgins became the first known British victim of HIV/AIDS.
Memories of the bloody Antarctic industry which left whales on the brink of extinction.
When Iraq's marshes became a hiding place for rebels, Saddam Hussein destroyed them.
Four years after Stalin's death, Moscow threw a festival for 30,000 foreign students.
The Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died in November 2004
What did Lee Harvey Oswald do for two years in the Soviet city of Minsk?
How hundreds of thousands of Mexicans were hired to work legally in US farms.
Recorded memories of the funeral in 1852 of the Duke of Wellington who defeated Napoleon.
For decades disabled people in the UK were offered tiny, three-wheeled, turquoise cars
Fanatics killed Japanese immigrants who accepted that Japan had surrendered in WW2.
Iranians stormed the US embassy in Iran in November 79 after America allowed in the Shah
A young woman's rare account of Jewish life in imperial Russia.
Writer Marcelo Rubens Paiva remembers the day his father was taken by the military.
Eyewitness accounts of the collapse of Germany in the final weeks of war in November 1918
Thousands of women volunteered for war work during WW1. Hear archive from one of them.
Thousands of East Africans were conscripted to fight for Britain and Germany during WW1
It was one of the battles which symbolised the horror and futility of WW1
Nora Krug investigated Nazi attacks in her German hometown on 9 November 1938
In November 1968 a young activist hit Germany's leader to draw attention to his Nazi past
How a love affair between the Queen's sister and Captain Peter Townsend gripped Britain.
Memories of the radical African American leader, Eldridge Cleaver.
KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin's top secret archive was smuggled to Britain in 1992
An eyewitness account of a discovery that changed Nigerian history
Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003
The former ruler of Chile, Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London in October 1998
Apartheid South Africa's outspoken critic Bishop Desmond Tutu wins the Nobel Peace Prize
When Belgian teenagers got sick they blamed Coca-Cola but the truth was more mysterious
In 1993 news broke about development aid linked to a British arms deal.
How a small guerrilla group tried to start a revolution in the Brazilian jungle.
In October 1973 an Arab oil embargo caused prices to rocket.
How the Italian authorities diverted the stream of molten lava from the Etna volcano.
Murdered while head of the Roman Catholic church in El Salvador, he is being made a saint
The story of a young Austrian woman who survived World War Two and the allied occupation
During WW2 Germany listed the people it wanted to arrest should Britain fall to the Nazis
In 1948 violence broke out against Romany-speaking traveller people in Sweden
How Britain's Labour government tried to kick the aristocrats out of Parliament
How Allan Ginsberg's reading in San Francisco in 1955 started the "Beat Generation".
Slava Zaitsev created the first high fashion collections in the USSR.
How a chemist and a surgeon found a way of helping burns to heal.
A clash between students in 1968 paved the way for a hardening of military rule.
The former West Indies cricketer took a London hotel to court in 1943
The bridge which connected neighbours across the water and inspired a TV hit worldwide.
The war lasted for 8 years and is thought to have left over a million people dead.
The scientific breakthrough that saved the lives of thousands of women
Sometimes called the 'Mother of Modern Dance'
South Africa sent 600 soldiers into Lesotho to quell political unrest in September 1998
Hundreds of people were contaminated when a disused radiotherapy machine was scrapped.
In 'Operation Market Garden' thousands of Allied troops parachuted into Nazi-held Holland
The film that tells the true story of the Algerians' fight for their capital Algiers
The case of five Cuban spies arrested in Miami in September 1998
The train signaled the end of the steam age on Britain's main-line rail network in 1968
Thought to be left by UFOs the phenomena was resolved when two men came forward in 1991.
One young man was the only passenger to survive a fire on a plane - find out how.
The brutal death in custody of the anti-Apartheid activist in September 1977.
In September 1938 Neville Chamberlain tried to negotiate with Hitler over Czechoslovakia.
How campaigners fought to stop the 'Khian Sea' from off-loading tons of US waste abroad
First-hand accounts of the Allied offensive that finally brought the bloody war to an end
In a hugely symbolic act Leningrad returned to its historic name of St Petersburg in 1991
A military coup in Libya in September 1969 brought Muammar Gaddafi to power.
In 1978 the racist murder of a young Bengali galvanised an immigrant community in London.
Dr Raymond Damadian attempted the first magnetic resonance scan of a human body.
A prisoner of war describes the deadly conditions building the bridge over the River Kwai
How an accident at Marcinelle in Belgium killed more than 100 Italian migrant workers.
The mysterious death of villagers and livestock in north-western Cameroon
An elderly German recalls her years as a leader in the Hitler Youth for girls.
The story of the mayor who created one of the world's biggest holiday resorts.
Albert Speer was Hitler's architect. We talk to a journalist who interviewed him.
The groundbreaking autobiography of a woman who grew up in 19th century Nigeria
Sales of alcohol in the USSR were limited in 1985 in a bid to fight drunkenness.
The student who appealed for the world's help when Soviet tanks invaded Czechoslovakia
A bank robbery, a three-day car chase and a journalist who got too close to the story.
The creation in 1958 of a new product that would revolutionise mealtimes worldwide.
Apartheid South Africa finally launched the country's first TV service in 1976.
Moneta Sleet, the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for journalism.
During WW2 the feminist and writer Vera Brittain spoke out against the bombing of Germany
In August 1994 Yitzhak Rabin became the first Israeli leader to visit Jordan
How two villages, Armenian and Azeri, managed to avoid ethnic violence by swapping homes
Guatemala's president was ousted from power by army officers backed by the CIA in 1954.
In 2003 Iran agreed to let the IAEA into the country to inspect its nuclear facilities.
The Bulgarian sanctuary that cares for bears once forced to dance.
How a bull's health led to a stand-off between monks and the Welsh government in 2007.
Thousands went to prison for refusing to join Britain's war effort.
In July 1976, female cadets were admitted to the US Military Academy for the first time.
In July l945 Britain's wartime leader Winston Churchill was ousted in a general election
The contentious history of the ruined city of Great Zimbabwe - finally revealed.
When two Cold War leaders argued about living standards in their countries.
How thousands of suspected communist sympathisers were killed in South Korea in 1950.
Two IRA bombs in London parks killed 11 military personnel and 7 horses on 20th July 1982
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed in July 1968
The attack by an armed Jewish group on British HQ in Palestine that left 91 dead.
To fight food shortages in the 1950s the USSR embarked on a major agricultural project
The Russian Tsar and his family were shot in a cellar in Yekaterinburg on 17 July 1918
How journalists located the wreck of a boat that capsized killing nearly 300 migrants
How a magazine article about West Germany's defence strategy led to a government crisis.
How India secretly developed and exploded its first atomic device in 1974
Published in 1958 the Nigerian writer's first novel revolutionised African fiction.
Ex-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on why she argued for Nato action in Kosovo
Post-war Britain saw a rise in "adventure playgrounds" born out of bomb-sites
The controversial art installation which upset Russians but is now seen as a masterpiece
All 290 on board were killed when a US warship downed an Iranian passenger jet in 1988
In July 2005, the most famous informant in American history Deep Throat revealed himself
Former President George Bush Senior's public row with the National Rifle Association.
The Cold War stand-off when a Soviet submarine was stranded on a Swedish rock.
Early 2003 saw a medical emergency sweep across the world.
The Irish journalist murdered for her work exposing drug barons in the 1990s
How 4,000 Italian troops surrendered to a young Jewish pilot from London, during WW2.
James Hansen got US politicians to listen to his warnings about climate change in 1988.
When the Israeli Army punished Colonel Uzi Even for being gay, he fought back.
How a town built around an asbestos mine made its residents fatally ill.
Bata, a Czech company, pioneered assembly line shoemaking
The American doctor who forced the medical profession to face up to child abuse.
The founding father of communist North Korea died in July 1994.
How ping pong brought together athletes from bitter rivals North and South Korea.
After the Korean war ended a few American prisoners chose to try life under communism.
North Korean communist troops invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950.
The Korean peninsula was split between North and South at the end of World War Two.
Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was executed in the early hours of June 1st 1962
Nigeria's military ruler died suddenly in June 1998.
In June 1968, students in Belgrade rebelled against Yugoslavia's 'market socialism'
In 1982, a Palestinian gunman attacked the Israeli ambassador to London, Shlomo Argov
The birth of the running programme that got millions off their sofas and out jogging
How a herdsman found the perfectly preserved body of a 42,000-year-old baby mammoth.
The American writer and scientist considered one of the greats of Science Fiction.
In 1948 Britain launched the National Health Service, NHS
Executives of the German company that made the drug Thalidomide went on trial in May 1968
In the mid 1960s a Dutch engineer came up with a scheme to share bikes and cut pollution.
For 75 years the BBC ran a monitoring service based in an English stately home.
Shoah, Claude Lanzmann's epic nine-hour film on the Holocaust was released in spring 1985
On 23 May 1988 a group of lesbian activists invaded a BBC TV news studio as it was on air
The launch of Ajoka, the group which pioneered theatre for social change in Pakistan.
On May 21st 1998 the president of Indonesia resigned after 31 years in power.
How Lt. Jack ReVelle disarmed two thermonuclear bombs which crashed in North Carolina.
The play Look Back in Anger changed British theatre when it was staged in 1956
A riot policeman's view of the violence which swept through France in 1968.
In 1907 Italian doctor, Maria Montessori, radically changed the way young children learn.
The famous British raid on German dams during World War Two.
In 1985 members of the US spy ring were arrested for selling Navy secrets to the USSR.
On the 10th May 1981 a baby was born after a successful operation while in the womb.
Bulgaria's former King Simeon II wins the country’s parliamentary election in 2001.
How 32 newly-independent nations came together to plan the future of their continent.
The condition was first described in 1943 by child psychiatrist Leo Kanner in the USA
The British politician was the first woman elected to lead a Western European country.
A surprise attack, a ship lost, a crew captured - memories of a merchant navy veteran
A new sort of game show started on Japanese TV in May 1986
Thousands of black children protested on the streets of Birmingham Alabama in May 1963.
The Royal Shakespeare Company opened in Britain in 1961 and changed theatre forever.
The great Spanish artist Pablo Picasso died in April 1973; hear from someone who knew him
A special unit in a Glasgow jail began offering art therapy to violent prisoners in 1973.
How secret negotiations in Norway led to an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
How an American swimmer crossed the "Ice Curtain" between the USA and the Soviet Union.
Veterans remember the famous German air ace who was killed in April 1918
In 1970, 20 million Americans came out to demonstrate for a sustainable environment.
The island of Skellig Michael has lighthouses, and a striking role in Star Wars films.
How a team of architects were given the responsibility to repair New York's skyline.
Germany launched a huge offensive on the Western Front in a last gamble to win the war.
The German student leader was shot in April 1968, leading to protests in West Berlin.
In 1971 during the Cold War, the UK expelled 90 Soviet diplomats suspected of spying.
Robert Mugabe sent troops to put down opposition supporters in western Zimbabwe in 1983.
Zoe Leyland was born in Australia on April 11th 1984 after her mother's IVF treatment.
The film company which changed British cinema.
The Emergency Rescue Committee helped save intellectuals and artists from the Nazis
Communist forces overran the key city in 1968 triggering one of the war's biggest battles
Actor Keir Dullea recalls starring in Stanley Kubrick's ground-breaking sci-fi movie
Chaos and hardship hit Russia with the rapid market reforms in early 1992.
How the UNAbomber Ted Kaczynski was caught after his brother turned him in
The Czech plastic explosive that was once undetectable to security services
The deal which brought peace to Northern Ireland after decades of violence.
Marie Tharp's discovery of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge proved the theory of plate tectonics
The story of Wahat al-Salam, Neve Shalom where Jews and Arabs live side by side in peace.
How a multi-faith choir brought together survivors of the Bosnian civil war.
The women who broke tradition shocking London's top-hatted stockbrokers.
The murder of a presidential candidate that shocked Mexico.
Did a nerve agent kill 6,000 sheep close to a US military testing site in 1968?
In 1988 scientists performed a carbon dating test on the Shroud of Turin.
Physicist Stephen Hawking's best-seller, A Brief History of Time, was published in 1988
How the 'King' of Rock'n'Roll became a GI in 1958 and served during the Cold War
In 1998 Latvian Waffen-SS veterans marched to remember a battle against the Soviets.
How the politician who led Brazil to democracy died before taking office as president.
How the BBC began Spanish and Portuguese broadcasts to fight the Nazis in the Americas
One of the worse US military atrocities took place during the Vietnam war.
An eyewitness account of Stalin's purge of top Soviet leaders during the Great Terror.
After independence Azerbaijan changed from Russian Cyrillic script to Latin letters.
The first birth control clinic in Britain was opened in London in 1921 by Dr Marie Stopes
The life and thought of the leading 20th-century political thinker, Hannah Arendt
Students at the world's first deaf-only University demand a deaf college President.
How Russia's disastrous war on the Eastern Front became a catalyst for revolution
How China's barefoot doctor scheme revolutionised rural healthcare.
The last episode of the iconic TV series broadcasts to record audiences across the US.
The Swedish Prime Minister was shot dead on a Stockholm street on February 28th 1986.
The huge steel sculpture that has become an icon for the north-east of England.
In India in 1974 thousands of people died in the world's last major smallpox epidemic
One of the biggest novels of the late twentieth century was published in February 1996.
David Vetter was born with a disease which meant he lived inside a plastic bubble
How one of America's most successful televangelists was caught with a prostitute
Over a million African migrants, most of them Ghanaian, had to leave Nigeria in 1983
A group of US feminists set up a commune to live entirely without men in 1971.
In 1967 two long-lost notebooks of the artist Leonardo da Vinci were discovered in Spain
Iran's first ever Minister for Women's Affairs was appointed in 1975.
The British fishermen's wives who fought for better safety standards in their industry
In 1987, 115 people died in an attack ordered by North Korea to disrupt the Olympic Games
Renfrew Christie was jailed and tortured for passing details of the bomb to the ANC
The 1958 plane crash that killed eight of Manchester United's famous "Busby Babes" team.
On 6th February 1918, women in Britain were given the right to vote for the first time
The extradition to France of the man known as 'the butcher of Lyon'
How two Scottish mothers forced the UK government to end corporal punishment in schools
The complex history behind the world's fastest growing refugee crisis.
How a surprise attack became a turning point in the Vietnam war
Tony Doherty recalls the murder of his father by British troops in Northern Ireland
Thomas A Dorsey is credited with developing Gospel music into a global phenomenon.
How one of the world's most popular toys was invented in a small Danish town in 1958
How one of the mainstays of vegetarian cuisine was launched in 1982
The life and times of the great surrealist artist, Salvador Dali
A US spy ship was caught by North Korean forces in the Sea of Japan on 23 January 1968.
How an influential painter's studio was moved in its entirety from London to Ireland.
How Guatemala's changes in law scuppered Ruth Sheehan's attempt to adopt a baby boy
Christopher Nolan became the first severely disabled person to win the Whitbread prize.
American president Dwight Eisenhower's great farewell address
After Apartheid, South Africans tried to come to terms with their brutal past.
For the first time women were encouraged to join the workforce to help win the war
German children were invited to stay in the English town of Reading after WW2 had ended
In 1963, France stopped Britain from joining the European Economic Community, now the EU
The story of one atrocity in Algeria's battle with radical Islamists in the 1990s
The touchscreen smartphone changed mobile technology for ever.
California high school student Randy Gardner set a world record in 1964.
A young man became an unwitting symbol of the anti-government protests
How one woman fled Brazil's military dictatorship with her kids on a hijacked plane.
The first child of South Asian background to become America's Spelling Bee champion.
On New Year's Eve 1999 the Russian President went on TV and said he was leaving office.
How Viv Nicholson became a celebrity in Britain after winning the football pools in 1961.
How two pilots became the first to fly non-stop around the world without refuelling
Mountaineers risked their lives to camouflage landmarks in the Russian city during WW2.
The African-American winter holiday was invented in Los Angeles in 1966.
The game has become a holiday tradition with families around the world.
One of the most successful American films of all time was released at Christmas 1962.
The Indian independence leader and campaigner for Dalit rights died in December 1956.
The return of university entrance exams showed the Cultural Revolution had really ended.
Australian scientists were central to the development of wifi.
How the Islamic movement brought a brief moment of peace to Mogadishu after years of war
The Australian Prime Minister went for a swim on December 17th 1967 - and never came back
The great soul singer who was killed in a plane crash in December 1967
Thousands died as a thick polluted fog engulfed London in 1952
The African-American lab technician whose surgery helped save millions of babies..
How an American hypnotist went to Iraq to treat Uday, the eldest son of Saddam Hussein.
Avant-garde art flourished in Russia after the 1917 revolution but was later suppressed
Whales were being hunted to extinction until a biologist realised they could sing.
In December 1917 Finland became an independent country for the first time.
In 1967 Britain's departure from Aden leads to the creation of an independent South Yemen
Construction on one of America's most famous monuments started in 1927.
Thousands of scientists moved to deepest Siberia to dedicate their lives to research.
Former colonel in the Russian secret service Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London.
How thousands of volunteers cleaned up after a huge environmental disaster in 2002
How El Salvador's leftist rebels led a top army officer into a deadly trap
The conviction of diplomat Alger Hiss was one of America's most notorious spy cases
East Germany's most famous singer-songwriter was exiled to the West in November 1976.
It was a box-office hit and a revolution in the world of animated films.
The president of South Vietnam was overthrown and murdered in a coup in November 1963.
Charles Manson's followers murdered 9 people on his orders. But how to prove his guilt?
In 1979 Islamic militants took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam
Huge diamond deposits were first discovered in the Kalahari desert in Botswana in 1967
Searching for the thousands who went missing during Lebanon's brutal civil war.
A British national institution closed in 1964.
Indian restaurants first became popular in the UK in the 1950s.
The story behind one of the most famous viral videos ever.
Recordings of two people who felt the cost of war both on the battlefield and at home
The Russian street dog was the first living creature to orbit the Earth.
Eyewitness accounts of the Russian Revolution of 7 November 1917
Osama bin Laden spoke to journalist Hamid Mir as US-led forces closed in after 9/11.
The book that revolutionised the way we look at human behaviour.
In 1997 the US Supreme Court ruled against censoring sex on the internet.
In the Lebanese city of Tripoli there is an exceptional architectural site.
How German monk Martin Luther started a religious revolution
Journalist Vladimir Herzog was killed in detention by the secret police in October 1975.
How Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir met and fell in love in Paris in October 1929
An eyewitness to the assassination of the famous Nigerian journalist Dele Giwa in 1986
How tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews escaped the Nazis by using false papers.
A new satirical magazine called Private Eye was published in London in October 1961.
Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu made abortion illegal in October 1966.
How British Jewish ex-servicemen fought fascists on the streets of Britain after WW2
The socialist leader of Mozambique was killed in a plane crash and many were suspicious.
Svetlana Gubareva recalls her ordeal when Chechen rebels seized a Moscow theatre in 2002.
The writer drowned off the south-west coast of Ireland in 1979.
In October 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis took the world to the brink of nuclear war
Ron Shipp was a close friend of OJ Simpson's but decided to testify against him in court.
Italy's great works of art were threatened by bombing and looting during World War Two.
The Catalan leader who was executed by a Spanish fascist firing squad in October 1940.
Felix Rodriguez recalls his part in the killing of the Marxist revolutionary in Oct 1967.
The murder of a gay student shocked Americans and helped reform US hate crime law
In 1962 the first black American was enrolled at Mississippi University amid riots
One woman's account of life on the front-line of Israel's occupation of Gaza.
King Henry VIII's favourite warship sank in a naval battle in 1545.
Shortly before the Islamic revolution in Iran, a very modern museum opened in the capital
Just 33 days into his reign, Pope John Paul I died unexpectedly in September 1978.
How Guinea became the first French West African colony to declare independence in 1958.
It took 508 days to complete the first expedition along the entire length of the wall.
Thousands of women and girls worked on farms throughout WW2 to produce much needed food.
The activist had died in South African police custody. He was buried on September 25 1977
A showdown on the American/Mexican border on September 14th 1958.
The inspiring story of how a Labrador led her blind master out of the World Trade Center.
Rabbits infested huge swathes of the Australian countryside in the 1940s and 1950s.
When Rodney Fox survived the jaws of a Great White Shark it inspired him to study them.
Millions of African locusts invaded the Caribbean having flown 5,000 kilometres non-stop.
A doctor working in Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon recalls the massacre there
Karl-Heinz Borchardt was arrested at the age of 18 by East German secret police.
A group of hippies occupied a sixty-room mansion in central London in September 1969.
Panicked run on bank signals the start of the financial crisis in the UK
When West African tin miners unearthed evidence of a lost civilization
The last man to be executed by guillotine in France was a Tunisian, Hamida Djandoubi.
When the principal singer collapsed, a member of the audience took over his role.
Eight scientists sealed themselves inside a giant greenhouse for an ambitious experiment.
How two girls' photos convinced Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that fairies exist.
A survivor recalls the Kendal train crash in September 1957 when more than 200 died.
Diana's brother Earl Spencer remembers the emotional speech he made at her funeral.
The online auction site first went live in 1995.
Animal Farm was an allegory about the dangers of Soviet communism and of Joseph Stalin.
The summer of 1983 saw a major breakthrough in the treatment of facial deformities.
The racial disturbances in west London which shocked Britain in 1958.
A home for asylum seekers was set on fire in the German city of Rostock in August 1992
Veterans tell the story of how medical care dealt with the horrors of WW1
How an ophthalmologist and a dermatologist discovered that a toxin could stop wrinkles
A German court put Nazi war criminals on trial 20 years after the end of World War Two
The "Bard of Bengal" died on August the 7th 1941.
In August 1974, Turkish troops invaded Cyprus for a second time cutting the island in two
The English-language newspaper was credited with standing up to Argentina's dictatorship.
In the 1990s Nike got a bad name after being linked to sweatshops in Asia.
How East Germans went naked on the beaches despite official communist party disapproval.
"We begin bombing in five minutes" said the US President in 1984. But he was only joking
The "lady with the lamp" died on August 13th 1910.
Exactly a year before Indian independence there were deadly riots in the city of Calcutta
The acclaimed Palestinian cartoonist was gunned down in London in 1987
Charles Moore recalls how he came across the world's largest floating rubbish dump.
In 2000 the US led a major effort to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In July 1999, the Chinese government banned the spiritual movement Falun Gong
In 1977 a state hospital near Paris began quietly changing the way women gave birth.
Croatian fascists killed Serbs, Jews and Roma people in Jasenovac camp during WW2.
Remembering Argentina's controversial First Lady Eva Peron, who died on July 26 1952.
In the 1970s, deep sea divers were at the sharp end of the North Sea oil boom
The Chinese civil war remembered by the Nationalist leader's former chief aide.
Hear one man's story of living in fear before 1967 when Britain legalised homosexuality
In the 1960s, many Soviet families moved to a flat of their own for the first time.
In July 1967 there was a breakthrough for the Welsh language.
How American military PSYOP teams waged war in Vietnam in the 1960s
In summer 1932, thousands of American First World War veterans marched on Washington
In July 1997 the Italian fashion designer was shot on the steps of his Florida mansion.
The home gaming console was a breakthrough in the world of computer games.
In July 1965 an 11-km tunnel dug deep beneath the Alps was opened to traffic
Indigenous Canadians spent the summer of 1990 in a stand off with police.
In the summer of 1992 thousands of ravers and New Age travellers gathered for a festival.
In 1961, one of the world's best ballet dancers, Rudolf Nureyev, defected from the USSR.
The dissident poet was sentenced to 7 years in a Soviet labour camp.
In 1993, academic Dr Alan Sked started an anti-EU political party
In July 1987 Tamil separatist rebels attacked a Sri Lankan army camp.
In 2009, a metal detectorist found the largest ever hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver
Why a Russian woman blurted out "We have no sex in the USSR" on international TV.
In 2002 Steve Fossett succeeded in flying solo around the world in a hot air balloon.
It was probably the most famous ever story of an alien spacecraft - on earth
In 1992 Disney opened its first theme park in Europe.
Israel and Egypt both laid claim for years to the Red Sea resort of Taba
The travel guide that helped tourists make their way around the world on a budget.
In the 1960s and 70s, thousands of westerners travelled to India by overland bus.
How a small Icelandic company broke the mould in air travel in the 1950s.
In 1937 Italian forces occupying Addis Ababa murdered thousands of Ethiopian civilians
The movement sparked by the brutal murder of a Chinese-American by 2 white men.
In 1950, tens of thousands of Christians were persecuted during the Korean War.
In 1995 Tokyo University staged the first exhibition to feature plastinated human corpses
In 1982 Italian banker Roberto Calvi was found dead in London in mysterious circumstances
We hear from one of the last survivors of a forgotten World War Two disaster
In June 2001 hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated for Berber rights in Algiers.
In June 1982 Phyllis Schlafly defeated a law to guarantee gender equality in the US.
In June 1997 a devastating eruption took place on the Caribbean island of Montserrat
Captain Nabih El Suhaimat fought to defend East Jerusalem from the Israelis
In 1967, Israel captured the whole of Jerusalem on the third day of the Six Day War
The Democrat Senator and Presidential hopeful died on June 6th 1968 after being shot.
The story of the Pakistani boy forced into bonded labour at the age of four.
In June 1972 Sally Priesand became the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi in the USA.
In May 1986, a small group of musicians staged the first charity rock concert in the USSR
Actor Barbara Leigh-Hunt on her role in one of the most controversial Hitchcock movies
In 1968 Dr Bindeshwar Pathak began his mission to improve toilet facilities for the poor.
In 1979 Canadians began a revolutionary scheme to aid thousands of Indochinese refugees
In May 1998 Pakistan responded to an Indian nuclear test with an explosion of its own
In May 1975 one of Latin America's leading young poets was shot dead in El Salvador.
When Ireland's banks went on strike in 1970, people cashed their cheques in pubs.
In 1942, the fascist government of Romania deported its Roma citizens to Transdniestria
The Taiwanese pop singer who became a superstar in communist China
The young woman, killed at a protest in 2009, who became a symbol for opposition in Iran
A Broadway musical has made an 18th century American politician famous once more.
In 1954 the US Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional.
How a New York housewife started a worldwide weight loss business in May 1963.
How one of America's most controversial politicians was shot while running for president.
French minister Maurice Papon went on trial for helping the Nazis to deport French Jews
In 1976, unknown Californian wines beat top French wines in a blind wine tasting in Paris
In 1977 a US government body first warned Americans that their diet was killing them.
In 1973, the most successful TV spy series ever to be broadcast in the USSR, went on air.
In May 1980 Communist China allowed capitalist activity for the first time.
It was a father and son team of Italian cosmetic surgeons who created liposuction.
In May 1976 the German left-wing extremist Ulrike Meinhof killed herself in prison.
After enduring years of slaughter during WW1, French army units finally mutinied
In 1992, shortly after the collapse of the USSR, a civil war erupted in Tajikistan.
The legendary photographic cooperative, Magnum, was founded 70 years ago
How the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo challenged Argentina's military rulers.
During the Bosnian war of the early 1990's, thousands of women were raped.
On April 26th 2005, Syrian forces finally pulled out of Lebanon after almost 30 years.
The man who changed the way people thought about mental illness.
Bulgaria's brutal policy of forced assimilation against its Turkish minority in the 1980s
In post-WW2 Japan, Shinichi Suzuki developed a new method of teaching the violin.
When it began sending images back to Nasa they were out of focus - Mike Weiss fixed it
Eugene Chaplin remembers his famous father's love-hate relationship with the USA
In April 1966 thousands of African artists and performers gathered in Senegal
Hear from the American who survived being shot down in his plane over the Amazon jungle
NTV was the only nationwide independent TV channel in Russia. It was taken over in 2001.
In April 1977, US disabled activists occupied a government building for nearly a month.
In 1969 Sikh bus drivers in Wolverhampton won the right to wear turbans on duty.
Tens of thousands of Polish officers were executed in the USSR during World War 2.
In the 1970s Ethiopia's military regime launched a brutal campaign of repression
Israa Abd El Fattah was one of the first Egyptian activists to use Facebook for protests.
America declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917
In April 1987 Princess Diana opened the UK's first purpose built HIV Aids unit
One man whose family were made refugees during the Nagorno-Karabakh war tells their story
In April 1982 the film star Jane Fonda launched her first workout video.
Glaciologist Pedro Svarka recalls the massive ice shelf tumbling into the Antarctic seas.
In March 1997 the BBC launched one of the most successful children's TV programmes ever.
In 1979, an outbreak of anthrax poisoning caused dozens of deaths in the Soviet Union.
In 1994, a tomato became the world's first genetically engineered food on sale
The outspoken cleric from El Salvador killed at the altar by a right-wing death squad.
King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was assassinated by his nephew in March 1975
The Russian-American philosopher whose novels praising capitalism sold in the millions.
In 1949, Moscow arranged the deportation of tens of thousands of Estonians to Siberia.
The underwater vessels were first used widely in the First World War
The murder of left-wing opposition politician Bernardo Jaramillo in March 1990.
In March 2001 thousands of Indian prostitutes united to fight for their rights.
In March 1939, German troops occupied Prague; hear the story of one young boy who escaped
Photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii took the first colour photographs of Russia
In March 1917 Tsar Nicholas II abdicated ending centuries of autocratic rule in Russia
How one man was mistakenly identified as the "Patient Zero" of the Aids epidemic
In March 1977 a group of American Muslims took over 100 people hostage in the US.
One of the world's most famous female artists died in March 1986.
How Mexico City's bold plan helped reduce dangerously high pollution levels.
In 2005 an unprecedented protest by Kuwaiti women won a historic change
The story of two British nurses who set up a first aid station on the Western Front
In 1998 someone vandalised the most famous statue in Denmark.
America's longest-serving First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt
Cells taken from an African American woman in 1951 revolutionised medical science
In March 1997 Mother Teresa retired from her charity work in India.
In 1997 obesity was first recognised as a global problem by the World Health Organisation
The story of the 1992 film which launched Nigeria's hugely successful movie industry
Valya Chervenyashka was accused of mass murder and tortured in a Libyan jail.
In the 1930s, American Nazi sympathisers held rallies and summer camps across the US.
In 1990, the manuscript of Mark Twain's classic novel was found in an attic in Hollywood.
The former Serbian President went on trial for war crimes in 2002. Hear from his lawyers.
In 1995 a US campaign started encouraging teenagers not to have sex before marriage
In 2006, a Ugandan newspaper began printing the names of professionals believed to be gay
In May 1974, Italians defied the Catholic Church and voted overwhelmingly for divorce.
In 1998, a Los Angeles rabbi came up with a new way for single people to meet each other.
When Giovanni Vigliotto went on trial he said he'd married more than a hundred women.
How American cities like San Francisco became safe havens for undocumented immigrants
How a ship laden with bottles of whisky was wrecked off the Scottish Hebrides
The story of a 1980 Kenyan pop song which became an unlikely global hit.
In February 1991, the captive orca, Tilikum, drowned his trainer, Keltie Byrne in Canada.
The scientist produced an x-ray photograph in 1951 that helped show the structure of DNA
A former Peruvian army officer recalls the last war between Latin American neighbours.
In February 1990 the South African president announced the dismantling of apartheid
In 1993, US forces launched a disastrous raid against the Somali warlord, General Aideed
Norwegian polar explorer Borge Ousland was the first person to cross Antarctica alone.
The first time a case of sexual harassment came to court in India.
The story of the BBC's longest-running radio programme.
On 26 January 1972 four Aboriginal men began a protest about land rights in Australia
Roald Dahl's book, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, was published in January 1964
In early 1977 far-right gunmen killed five people at a law firm in Atocha Street, Madrid
Microwave ovens for domestic kitchens first became widely available in 1967.
The fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons launched in January 1974.
The epic mini-series about slavery in the USA hit TV screens in January 1977
How one young woman fled war in Somalia to grow up in Kenya's massive refugee camp
The Turkish Armenian journalist was shot dead in January 2007 in front of his office.
A former Salvadoran guerrilla fighter talks about her experience of war and peace.
What exactly goes on during the months between election and inauguration?
How Britain's most famous Royal brought the danger landmines to the world's attention.
Auca tribesmen killed five American missionaries in the jungle in January 1956.
A victim of abuse at the hands of the Chicago police tells his story.
How British code-breakers exposed a German plot against the United States in 1917
In 1999 a Turkish woman MP appeared in parliament wearing a headscarf. It caused uproar.
How the collapse of 'pyramid' investment schemes caused riots in Albania in 1977
In January 1977 an opposition movement began in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia.
A Vietnamese war veteran on life in the Viet Cong's tunnel network in South Vietnam
How conceptual artist Oleg Kulik posed as a dog, attacking passers-by in Moscow.
Aliona Doletskaya remembers starting post Soviet-Russia's biggest glossy fashion magazine
The story of how the world was made safe from the former Soviet Union's nuclear legacy
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Georgia found itself on the verge of civil war.
Hear from two of the key players who brought to an end over 70 years of communism
How the first mission around the Moon captured the world's imagination at Christmas 1968
The great Irish playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett died on 22nd December 1989
How Greece and Turkey almost came to war over a tiny rocky island in the Aegean sea.
The experimental film-maker made his first feature film 'Sebastiane' in 1976.
Giuseppe Pinelli was an Italian anarchist who died in police custody - but why?
Brazil's Vida Alves starred in the first ever Latin American soap opera in December 1951.
The 'Back to Sleep' campaign was launched in 1991 to prevent babies dying in their cots
Millions of Hindus were gripped by reports of their God, Ganesha, 'drinking' milk.
A young Jewish woman escaped from the Kaunas Ghetto in Lithuania to fight the Nazis.
The life and tragic death of the first woman leader of the Basque separatist group ETA.
Sizani Ngubane set up the Rural Women's Movement in South Africa in the 1990s
Scientist Elizabeth Fisher created a new strain of mouse to help understand Down Syndrome
In 2004, the Kenyan ecologist became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize
Yelena Malyutina was a Soviet female bomber pilot who fought in WW2.
In 1976, archaeologists found the ruins of a huge indigenous settlement hidden in forest
Mercedes Doretti has spent her life uncovering mass graves around the world.
In December 1976 gunmen tried to kill the legendary reggae singer at his home in Jamaica.
World famous architect Le Corbusier built a city to revive Indian pride after Partition.
In the early 1960s there were virtually no laws covering car safety in the USA.
3 sisters in the Dominican Republic were beaten to death on the orders of the dictator
How coal miners in France went from post-war heroes to pariahs
In 1916 the authorities in India uncovered plans to overthrow British rule
How a Kenyan woman, Dame Daphne Sheldrick, first raised orphaned baby African elephants
In Nov 2001 a group of British tourists was arrested in Greece and charged with spying.
Director Hal Prince remembers the hit musical opening on Broadway in November 1966
In Nov 1996 leading ornithologist Tony Silva was convicted of smuggling endangered birds.
In 1995 one of Madagascar's most historic sites was destroyed by fire
In November 1991 Indonesian troops opened fire on independence activists in Dili.
The publication of Salman Rushdie's book outraged many Muslims around the world
In 1962 Monty Norman wrote the music for the first James Bond film, Dr No.
The widow of the famous folk singer recalls the night that changed her husband's life.
Writer and musician Michael Lydon recalls the birth of an iconic magazine.
On 8 November 1991, a competition which judged artificial intelligence was held.
In 2004 a child sex abuse trial on a remote island in the Pacific shocked the world.
Photographer Dickey Chapelle was the first woman war reporter to be killed in Vietnam
In October 1990 the Mexican poet and essayist was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
A former communist Red Guard recalls his role in China's Cultural Revolution.
How an African American soldier captured in the Korean war, decided to settle in China
How a performance in London made the reputation of the world's greatest escape artist
In 1965 French agents helped kidnap and disappear the Moroccan dissident in Paris
In 1986 London's Stock Exchange underwent one of the biggest shake-ups in its history.
In October 1956 Hungarians took to the streets of Budapest to protest at Soviet rule.
Veterans talk about their experience of 'shell shock' in recordings from the BBC archive
In 1961 a new generation of comic-book super heroes was launched in the US
On 21st October 1966, tragedy struck a village in Wales when a landslide crushed a school
The story of the great French conceptualist artist Marcel Duchamp and his art
During the 1950s in Kenya, rebels known as the Mau Mau were fighting against British rule
How a controversial Catholic priest had millions of listeners in the 1930s.
The row over hi-tech spying in America's new diplomatic building in the USSR
How an advertising campaign for vacuum cleaners went badly wrong.
In October 1990, Syrian jets ousted their main opponent in Lebanon ending the civil war
In 1988 Chileans voted to end the brutal 15-year military rule of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
In 1918, more than fifty million people died in a global flu pandemic.
The dissident poet was released from a labour camp on the eve of a US-Soviet summit
In October 1966, the Beach Boys released their "pocket symphony" Good Vibrations.
In 1994, a TV programme in Northern Ireland lifted the lid on clerical child sex abuse.
On October 6th 1976 Thai security forces opened fire on student demonstrators in Bangkok.
In October 1982 seven people in the US died after taking painkillers laced with cyanide.
In 1946, a chance encounter between two men launched the high IQ club, Mensa
He was one of Britain's most admired 20th century painters. His daughters remember him.
On September 29th 1957 there was a major nuclear accident in the Soviet Union.
In 1971 inmates rioted and seized control of the US jail, taking guards hostage
In the dying years of Apartheid, the white government was desperate to keep control.
During WWII, Britain deported some civilians classed as 'enemy aliens' to Australia.
In September 1726, a woman called Mary Toft claimed she was giving birth to rabbits.
On September 22nd 1996 an Australian doctor helped a cancer sufferer to die.
In 2006 Brazil passed the ground-breaking "Maria da Penha" law to tackle domestic abuse.
Only one Congresswoman voted against the 'war on terror'. Her name was Barbara Lee.
In September 1892 gold was discovered in Western Australia
In September 1992 security forces in Peru arrested the leader of the Shining Path rebels.
Tanks were first used in warfare on 15 September 1916 during the Battle of the Somme
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks in the USA someone started posting Anthrax to politicians
In 1922 a huge fire destroyed the ancient city of Smyrna on the Aegean, thousands died
In September 1940 a group of French schoolboys found a network of ancient cave paintings.
In September 2001, 68 people died after an outbreak of alcohol poisoning in Estonia.
A speech by Jacques Delors helped change British trade unionists' attitude to Europe
In September 1966 the cult American science fiction series first went on air.
On September 9th 1976 the founding father of Chinese Communism, Mao Zedong, died.
The brother and sister who took part in the struggle to free Italy from fascism in WW2.
In September 1967 Swedish traffic changed to driving on the right-hand side of the road.
Testimonies from the conflict that changed US-Mexican relations forever
Alasdair Geddes on finding smallpox in Janet Parker in 1978 and the events that followed
In 1920, the Central Asian Muslim kingdom of Bukhara was taken over by Communists.
It's thirty years since the birth of the counter-culture festival Burning Man.
How a Latin music supergroup helped spread salsa music from New York to the world.
An audacious military mission to bring electricity to southern Afghanistan.
In 1986 the British government launched the first ever public health campaign on Hiv Aids
In August 1969, the first classical ballet company to focus on black dancers was formed
The hostage who trusted her kidnapper more than the police
Maureen Flanagan on her relationship with London's gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray.
The Scottish-born naturalist considered the father of the National Parks in the USA.
In August 1976, two US soldiers were killed in the zone between North and South Korea.
In August 1986 the first Studio Ghibli film hit Japanese cinema screens.
In 1963 a third of schools in the US had to change their rules on Bible reading.
How the great poet and dramatist was murdered at the start of the Spanish Civil War.
After WW2, many Soviet citizens who had ended up outside the USSR, refused to go home.
In 1998, al-Qaeda killed more than 200 people in attacks on US embassies in East Africa.
Nearly two thousand years ago, Masada in Israel was the site of a mass suicide.
Philippe Petit recalls his daring feat high above the New York streets in August 1974
In August 1981 over 11,000 air traffic controllers were fired after two days on strike.
The Middle East's oldest arts festival, in Baalbek in Lebanon, started 60 years ago
It's 65 years since JD Salinger's classic novel The Catcher in the Rye was published
Jacqueline Du Pre makes one of the most famous classical recordings of the 20th Century
In August 1966 14 people were shot dead in America's first mass shooting at a university
The story of Russian spy Alexandr Ogorodnik and his CIA handler, Marti Peterson.
In 1976, one of the deadliest earthquakes in history hit the city of Tangshan in China
In the summer of 1951 art historian John Richardson met Pablo Picasso for the first time.
In 1954 CIA-backed officers overthrew Guatemala's elected government.
In 1981 police used CS gas for the first time in mainland Britain to control race riots
In 1913, a Russian Jew, Mendel Beilis, was falsely accused of a murder.
The film star and martial arts legend died suddenly in Hong Kong in 1973.
In July 1966, the US government health insurance programme Medicare came into force.
In the 1970s Dutch Elm disease killed millions of Elm trees in England, France and the US
In 1916, Muslims in Central Asia rose up against Russian imperial rule.
In 1937, Britain took in 4000 Basque children at the height of fighting in northern Spain
In July 1977 US campaigners launched a boycott against Nestle over the sale of baby milk.
In July 2006, seven coordinated explosions tore through packed commuter trains in Mumbai.
In 1991, Yugoslav army tanks moved into Slovenia to try to stop it becoming independent
In July 1989 four Cuban army officers were convicted of drug trafficking and executed.
In July of 1967 London Bridge put up for sale. American Robert P McCulloch bought it
In 1993, Denmark held a second referendum on greater EU integration
Ron Kovic is a former US Marine turned peace activist whose story became a Hollywood film
In 1941, far-right Ukrainians declared independence, hoping for Hitler's support.
In the summer of 1665, London was gripped by one of the worst epidemics in its history
On June 25th 1996 a huge truck bomb was planted at a US housing complex in Saudi Arabia.
In June 1969 the heavily polluted Cuyahoga River, in Ohio in the USA, caught fire
In the 1990s more than 280,000 women were sterilised in Peru, many against their will.
On 23 June 1993 a young wife cut off her husband's penis in a frenzied attack
Michael Foale was on board the Mir space station when a resupply vessel crashed into it
Robert Robinson, a black American engineer, spent 43 years in the USSR against his will.
In June 1940, most of the residents of Paris fled as German soldiers occupied the city
It was not until the 1950s that the link was proven between cigarettes and lung cancer
In 1991 one of the largest volcanic eruptions of recent times occurred in the Philippines
In June 1979 the Moral Majority was launched and changed the course of American politics
In June 1999 the tiny Himalayan kingdom broadcast its first TV programme
How a white man and a black woman won the right to marry in America in the 1960s
In 1981 Israel destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor; it began Iraq's secret nuclear programme
In 1979 the Karakoram Highway between Pakistan and China was opened to the public
In 1999 Italian art experts completed an ambitious restoration of da Vinci's masterpiece.
The drug Ritalin was developed in the 1940s - it's now used to treat ADHD.
How the man convicted for killing Martin Luther King was detained in London in June 1968.
In 1991 Katie Koestner went public with her experience of date rape and divided America.