Fighting for the pill in Japan
After decades of campaigning in Japan, the pill was finally legalised in 1999. In contrast, the male impotency drug Viagra was approved for use in just six months, and legalised before the contracepti...
29 Jul 20219min
The soldier who never surrendered
In January 1972 a Japanese soldier was found hiding in the jungle on the Pacific island of Guam. He had been living in the wild there for almost 30 years unaware that World War Two had ended. His name...
28 Jul 20219min
The birth of Karaoke
Daisuke Inoue was playing keyboards in a band in Kobe, Japan, when he invented the Karaoke machine in 1971. He had a customer who wanted to impress business clients by singing along to his favourite s...
27 Jul 20219min
Japan's Bullet Train
On 1 October 1964, the fastest train the world had ever seen was launched in Japan. The first Shinkansen, or bullet train, ran between Tokyo and Osaka, and had a top speed of 210km per hour. Lucy Burn...
26 Jul 20218min
When war came to Darfur
In the early 2000s, rebels in Sudan's Darfur region took up arms against the government. In response, the Khartoum regime launched a scorched earth campaign along ethnic lines. The Sudanese military a...
22 Jul 202111min
Surviving Norway's day of terror
On 22 July 2011 Norway suffered its worst terror attacks in recent history. A far-right extremist, Anders Breivik, launched a bomb attack on government offices in Oslo, and then, two hours later, atta...
21 Jul 20219min
The Battle of Gondar
In 1941, Italian colonial rule in East Africa ended when Mussolini’s soldiers made a dramatic final stand in the northern Ethiopian town of Gondar. After a bloody battle, General Guglielmo Nasi surren...
20 Jul 20219min
Domestic violence in Brazil
Ground-breaking legislation came into effect in Brazil in 2006. For the first time the courts were ordered to recognise different forms of domestic violence. The 'Maria da Penha law' was named after ...
19 Jul 20219min
