England's summer of riots
In the summer of 2001 race riots gripped towns in the north of England. They began in Oldham in late May 2001, spreading to Burnley in June, and Bradford in July. All had their own specific local tri...
16 Jul 202112min
When the Taliban took Kabul
Taliban fighters first took control of Afghanistan's capital city Kabul in late September 1996. They imposed their strict interpretation of Islam on Afghans, outlawing music and TV, banning the educat...
15 Jul 20218min
Jane Goodall and chimpanzees
In the 1960s a young Englishwoman made a discovery that changed our understanding of animal behaviour. Jane Goodall was living among wild chimpanzees in Tanzania when she observed them using sticks an...
14 Jul 20218min
Prisoner of the Cultural Revolution
As a schoolboy in communist China, Kim Gordon took part in huge rallies to praise Chairman Mao. But when Mao's so-called Cultural Revolution began to target intellectuals and foreigners, Kim's British...
13 Jul 20218min
The race for the jet engine
Using eyewitness recordings from the BBC archive we hear from the pioneers of the jet engine, Sir Frank Whittle and Hans von Ohain, about the struggle to develop a revolutionary new engine in the 1930...
12 Jul 202113min
The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior
On 9 July 1985 the Greenpeace campaign ship was bombed by French secret agents in Auckland, New Zealand. One environmental campaigner was killed and the Rainbow Warrior was sunk. Claire Bowes heard fr...
9 Jul 20219min
The first World Romani Congress
Roma people from all over Europe met in England for a conference in 1971. The Roma, who migrated from India over a thousand years ago, often used to be called gypsies. Many Roma led a travelling life,...
8 Jul 20219min
The famine in North Korea
Communist North Korea suffered a devastating famine in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union which had been one of the country's main supporters. Hundreds of thousands of people died of sta...
7 Jul 20218min
