Cuban boxing and the brink of nuclear war
The History Hour22 Okt 2022

Cuban boxing and the brink of nuclear war

A collection of the latest Witness History programmes which are all about Cuba. Presented by Max Pearson, who speaks to boxing journalist Steve Bunce about the nation's great boxers.

Earlier this year, Cuba lifted the ban on professional boxing, which Fidel Castro imposed in 1962. Rachel Naylor speaks to Mike ‘The Rebel’ Perez, who escaped in 2007 after being rewarded with a fizzy drink and two snapper fish after winning a world amateur title for his country. His defection needed the assistance of Mexican gangsters, an Irish promoter with an eye for a winning fighter and a fishing boat.

We also hear about a campaign aimed at eradicating illiteracy, a baseball match between Cuba and the US that was an act of diplomacy and the Cuban Missile Crisis which saw the world brought to the brink of nuclear war.

(Photo: Cuban boxer Teofilo Stevenson at the 1980 Olympics. Credit: Jerry Cooke via Getty Images)

Episoder(468)

The First Russian Revolution of 1917

The First Russian Revolution of 1917

100 years since the Russian Revolution, Imperial Russia in colour, AIDS and the mystery of 'Patient Zero', when Indian sex workers marched for employment rights and the British Lord who fled the Nazis in Czechoslovakia as a six year old on the Kindertransport.Photo: 12th March 1917: Barricades across a street in St Petersburg, as a red flag floats above the cannons, during the Russian Revolution. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

18 Mar 201751min

Kuwaiti Women Secure the Vote

Kuwaiti Women Secure the Vote

Women in Kuwait win the right to vote, and the only women on the front line on the Western Front in World War One; battling smog in Mexico City in the 1980s, the artist Georgia O'Keeffe, and America's first incident of Islamic terror forty years ago.Photo: the first women candidates for parliamentary elections in Kuwait in 2006, Aisha al-Rashid (R) and Rola Dashti (C) (Credit: Yasser al-Zayya/AFP/Getty Images)

10 Mar 201750min

Mother Teresa - The Nun Who Became A Saint

Mother Teresa - The Nun Who Became A Saint

Life with Mother Teresa among the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, how the World Health Organisation came to realise that obesity was a global problem and Eleanor Roosevelt in the White House. Plus the immortal cells of Henrietta Lacks - a remarkable story of one woman's impact on medical research.(PHOTO: AP Mother Teresa holds a child in 1978)

4 Mar 201750min

The German American Bund

The German American Bund

In the 1930s, a group of German-American Nazi sympathisers known as the German American Bund held rallies and summer camps across the US. Also, the lawyers who helped Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic defend himself against war crimes charges and how vandals attacked Denmark's famous Little Mermaid Statue.

25 Feb 201750min

Love and Marriage

Love and Marriage

From speed-dating to gay romance, from divorce to bigamy we look at recent changes in the way society perceives love and marriage. Plus - an expert view on how to make sure your love endures.Photo: A heart hanging over Carnaby Street in London. Credit: BBC.

18 Feb 201750min

Sanctuary Cities in the USA

Sanctuary Cities in the USA

This week how American cities like San Francisco became safe havens for undocumented immigrants, the story of Tilikum and first recorded killing of a human by an orca whale, discovering DNA, the ship wreck that gave locals whiskey galore and Kenya's smash hit song - that got everyone singing in Swahili.(Photo: Supporters of Sanctuary Cities demonstrating in San Francisco, January 2017. Credit: AP)

11 Feb 201750min

The End of Apartheid

The End of Apartheid

Former South African police minister on ending apartheid, eyewitness to Black Hawk Down, landmark sexual harassment case in India, the last South American war and a record breaking solo trek across the Antarctic Picture: Anti-apartheid protestors demonstrate in Cape Town on the same day that President de Klerk announced the lifting of the ban on the ANC and the release of all political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela (Credit: RASHID LOMBARD/AFP/Getty Images)

4 Feb 201750min

The Aboriginal Tent Embassy

The Aboriginal Tent Embassy

On 26 January 1972 four Aboriginal men began a protest outside Parliament House in Canberra, Australia. They erected a beach umbrella on the grass and called it an 'embassy'.Plus, the murder of five lawyers in Madrid in 1977, which became a turning point in Spain's return to democracy; the invention of the microwave oven; Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; and 75 years of the BBC's longest-running programme, Desert Island Discs.

28 Jan 201750min

Populært innen Samfunn

giver-og-gjengen-vg
aftenpodden
rss-spartsklubben
konspirasjonspodden
aftenpodden-usa
popradet
rss-nesten-hele-uka-med-lepperod
vitnemal
wolfgang-wee-uncut
grenselos
synnve-og-vanessa
frokostshowet-pa-p5
rss-dannet-uten-piano
fryktlos
fladseth
alt-fortalt
min-barneoppdragelse
relasjonspodden-med-dora-thorhallsdottir-kjersti-idem
opptur-med-annette-og-ingeborg
rss-herrepanelet