Pinyin: The man who helped China to read and write
In 1958, a brand new writing system was introduced in China called Pinyin. It used the Roman alphabet to help simplify Chinese characters into words. The mastermind behind Pinyin was a professor calle...
18 Mar 20249min
The last eruption of Mount Vesuvius
The Mount Vesuvius eruption that buried Pompeii in 79AD is well known, but far fewer people know about the last time the volcano erupted in 1944.It was World War Two, and families in southern Italy ha...
15 Mar 20249min
Winifred Atwell: The honky-tonk star who was Sir Elton John’s hero
Winifred Atwell was a classically-trained pianist from Trinidad who became one of the best-selling artists of the 1950s in the UK. She played pub tunes on her battered, out-of-tune piano which travell...
14 Mar 20249min
Paraguay adopts its second language
In 1992, Guarani was designated an official language in Paraguay’s new constitution, alongside Spanish.It is the only indigenous language of South America to have achieved such recognition and ended y...
13 Mar 20248min
Finding the longest set of footprints left by the first vertebrate
In 1992 off the coast of Ireland, a Swiss geology student accidentally discovered the longest set of footprints made by the first four-legged animals to walk on earth.They pointed to a new date for th...
12 Mar 20249min
11M: The day Madrid was bombed
A regular morning turned into a day of nightmares for Spanish commuters on 11 March 2004.In the space of minutes, 10 bombs detonated on trains around Madrid, killing nearly 200 people and injuring mor...
11 Mar 20248min
MH370: The plane that vanished
On 8 March 2014, a plane carrying 239 passengers and crew disappeared.What happened to missing flight MH370 remains one of the world's biggest aviation mysteries.Ghyslain Wattrelos’ wife Laurence and ...
8 Mar 202410min
Rehabilitating Kony's child soldiers in Uganda
In 2002, a Catholic nun arrived in Gulu, a town in northern Uganda, to help set up a sewing school for locals. For years, the town had been the target of brutal attacks by the Lord's Resistance Army,...
7 Mar 20249min
