With the president on 9/11
On September 11 2001, President George W. Bush was visiting an elementary school in Florida as two planes hit the World Trade Center. In an image that would become iconic, the White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, broke the news to the president by whispering in his ear as he listened to schoolchildren practising their reading. In interviews from 2011, Andrew Card recalls the moment that transformed President Bush’s presidency and the course of recent history.PHOTO: President George W. Bush shortly after learning of the 9/11 attacks (AFP/Getty Images)
30 Loka 202010min
Ronald Reagan and the Moral Majority
In June 1979 the Moral Majority was launched and changed the course of American politics. It was set up to promote family values by religious conservatives from Catholic, Jewish and evangelical Christian communities. It urged protestants in particular to go against the tradition of separating politics and religion and register to vote, and to vote Republican. Richard Viguerie was one of the driving forces behind the movement. He spoke to Claire Bowes in 2016.(Photo: Ronald Reagan with Richard Viguerie in Atlanta, Georgia, 1975, courtesy of ConservativeHQ.com)
29 Loka 202010min
The Watergate scandal
In 1973, the US Senate began an investigation which would eventually lead to Richard Nixon standing down as President a year later. Senator Howard Baker was on the Watergate committee. In 2013, he spoke to Louise Hidalgo.(Photo: Senator Howard Baker (left), Senator Sam Irvin, Sam Dash, Senator Herman Talmadge. Credit: Gene Forte/Getty Images.)
28 Loka 202011min
Shirley Chisholm - the black woman who tried to be president
In January 1972 Shirley Chisholm became the first major-party black candidate to make a bid for the US Presidency. She was also the first black woman elected to Congress. In 2015, Farhana Haider spoke to former Congressman Charles Rangel who worked with Shirley Chisholm.(Photo: Shirley Chisholm at the Democratic National Convention in 1972. Credit: Getty Images)
27 Loka 202010min
When JFK won the US presidency
Ted Sorensen was a close aide and speechwriter for John F Kennedy. In an interview with Lucy Williamson he remembered the night that Kennedy won the US presidential election in 1960. It was a close race against the Republican contender Richard Nixon.Photo: US President John F. Kennedy giving his first State of the Union address to Congress in January 1961. (Credit: NASA/SSPL/Getty Images)
26 Loka 202010min
Nasa's pioneering black women
Usually it is the names of astronauts that people remember about the space race. But less celebrated are the teams of people working on how to put a rocket into orbit. Only in recent years have stories come to light of the contributions of the black women involved. Many were recruited as 'computers', meaning that they carried out complex mathematical calculations by hand, before machines were invented that could do the job. Christine Darden started her career in the computer pool, helping the engineers work out the trajectories needed to bring the Apollo Capsule back to Earth. Finally, she broke through the hidden barriers facing women at the time, gaining a promotion to engineer. (Photo: Dr Christine Darden at a desk in Nasa's Langley Research Center, 1973. Credit: Bob Nye/Nasa/Getty Images)
23 Loka 20208min
The missing victims of apartheid
In 2005, South Africa set up the Missing Persons Task Team to trace and locate the remains of the hundreds, possibly thousands, who disappeared in "political circumstances" during the brutal years of white minority rule. Many were victims of the state security services. Some were victims of secret death squads which abducted and murdered opponents of the regime. Alex Last talks to the leader of the team, Madeleine Fullard, about her work and how the cases reveal the dark and complicated history of apartheid rule. Photo: Madeleine Fullard, head of the National Prosecuting Authority's Missing Persons Task Team, at a gravesite in Red Hill on November 15, 2012 in Durban, South Africa. (Getty Images)
22 Loka 202014min
The Cutter Incident
In April 1955, more than 100,000 children in America were inoculated with a defective batch of the brand-new polio vaccine. Because of a manufacturing mistake at a small company called Cutter Laboratories, the children were given live polio virus; around 160 were permanently paralysed and 10 died in the worst disaster in US pharmaceutical history. Simon Watts talks to Anne Gottsdanker, one of the victims of what became known as the Cutter Incident.PHOTO: Anne Gottsdanker with her father Bob Gottsdanker in 1956 (personal archive)
21 Loka 20209min
