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 1930s. An invention which would change the world. Photo: Sir Frank Whittle (1907-1996) is pictured here with the Whittle WV engine at the Science Museum in London c 1988 (Getty Images)
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 from the ship's captain Pete Willcox who was on board when the attack took place.This programme is a rebroadcast(Photo: Captain Pete Willcox, courtesy of Greenpeace)
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, moving from place to place doing seasonal work. They suffered persecution and prejudice for centuries, and many died in the Holocaust during World War Two. But their common language and culture brought them together. Claire Bowes has been speaking to Grattan Puxon who organised the Congress. Image: First World Romani Congress
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 starvation. Some estimates put the death toll at more than two million. Josephine Casserly has been hearing from Joseph Kim, who was a child in North Korea in the 1990s, about the struggles of his family. Joseph has written a book about his experience called Under the Same Sky.Photo: North Korean boys at a kindergarten in Pyongyang pose for a World Food Programme Emergency Food Assistance photographer in 1997. Their thin arms and legs, knobby knees and distended abdomens show that they are seriously malnourished. (Credit: Susan North/AFP/Getty Images)
7 Jul 20218min
Britain's wartime gold
When Britain went to war with Germany in 1939 it had to find somewhere to keep its money. Because of the risk of invasion, a decision was made to send the country's gold reserves to Canada. Vincent Dowd reports on what became known as 'Operation Fish'.Photo: Gold ingots. Credit: Science photo library
6 Jul 20219min
Cuba's blindness epidemic
As Cuba faced a devastating economic crisis in the early 1990s, leading to severe food shortages and malnutritiion, some 50,000 Cubans were inexplicably struck down with sight loss. But health officials on the communist-led island as well as experts at WHO initially believed it was caused by a viral infection spreading through the population. Despite hostile relations between his country and Cuba, the American eye specialist Dr Alfredo Sadun was asked to go to the island in May 1993 to investigate. He tells Mike Lanchin about his meetings with Fidel Castro, and how he helped solve the mystery of what was termed the Cuban epidemic of optic neuropathy.Photo: A doctor examines a patient affected by sight loss at a clinic in Havana, Cuba, May 1993 (ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP via Getty Images)
5 Jul 20219min
China's trailblazing foreign students
China has the largest number of overseas students in the world but when students first started venturing out of Communist China it was still a country feeling the aftereffects of the Cultural Revolution. Launched in 1966 by Communist leader Mao Zedong the Cultural Revolution plunged China into a decade of chaos. The education of millions of young people were disrupted and China was cut off from the rest for world. Farhana Haider has been speaking to Chinese American writer Zha Jianying, one of the first batch of Chinese students to arrive in the US in the early 1980s.Image: Chinese writer Zha Jianying, July 2015 Credit: Simon Song/ Getty Images
2 Jul 202113min
The Chinese Communist Party
A small group of revolutionaries formed the Chinese Communist Party in July 1921. Led by Chairman Mao, they fought their way to power in the world's most populous nation and have stayed in control since the end of China's civil war in 1949. Zhu Zhende was a young recruit in the People's Liberation Army who marched in front of Chairman Mao at celebrations in Beijing when the communists took power. He spoke to Yashan Zhao about the optimism and excitement of that time, and about how the Communist Party changed his life.The programme is a rebroadcast.Photo: a communist statue in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. Credit: BBC.
1 Jul 20219min
