Tanzania adopts Swahili to unite the country
After Tanzania, then called Tanganyika, became independent from Britain in 1961, the country's leader, Julius Nyerere, made Swahili the national language to unite its people.Walter Bgoya tells Ben Hen...
30 Marras 202310min
Cameroon’s mysterious lake deaths
On 21 August 1986, hundreds of villagers in a remote part of Cameroon mysteriously died overnight, along with 3,500 livestock.In the weeks-long investigation that followed, scientists tried to work ou...
29 Marras 20238min
The bird that defied extinction
In 1969, a Peruvian farmer called Gustavo Del Solar received an unusual assignment - finding a bird called the white-winged guan that had been regarded as extinct for a century.After years of searchin...
28 Marras 20239min
Cabbage Patch Kids
In 1983, all hell broke loose when a new toy hit stores in the United States. Cabbage Patch Kids were so popular that people were getting injured when they tried to buy them. But Martha Nelson Thoma...
27 Marras 20239min
The Mumbai attacks
On 26 November 2008, 10 gunmen from the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba carried out coordinated attacks on Mumbai's busiest hotspots including the Taj and Oberoi hotels, a train statio...
24 Marras 20238min
The Paris heatwave
In August 2003 Europe was hit by the hottest heatwave for hundreds of years. Tens of thousands of people died. Not built to withstand two weeks of extreme heat, Paris turned into a death trap for it...
23 Marras 20239min
Kennedy’s nail-biter election victory
On 22 November 1963, United States President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.Lucy Williamson looks back to 8 November 1960, when Richard Nixon and JFK went toe to toe at the polls in ...
22 Marras 20239min
The invention of bubble tea
In 1987, a tea shop in Taiwan named Chun Shui Tang began selling pearl milk tea, or bubble tea, as it’s often called. It would revolutionise the tea-drinking world. Ben Henderson speaks to Liu Han-Chi...
21 Marras 202310min
