Moscow Metro and the Olympics
The History Hour26 Juli 2024

Moscow Metro and the Olympics

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History episodes.

We go underground for a tour of the Moscow Metro, the subterranean transport network built by thousands of Russian workers in the 1930s.

Our guest Mark Ovenden, author of Underground Cities, reveals how the Moscow system influenced many other countries around the world.

Plus, more about a revolutionary new method for transporting medicines that was launched in Ghana in 1974. The cold chain system helped refrigerate vaccines aimed at tackling potentially deadly diseases.

Also, as Paris lifts the curtain on the 2024 Olympics, we go back to the last time the French city hosted the Games - one hundred years ago.

We hear the remarkable story of Somali 400m sprinter Zamzam Farah, and how she became a crowd favourite in the London 2012 Olympics after finishing last in her heat by 27 seconds.

Finally, we meet Shuss - a French cartoon skier and the first Olympic mascot, designed for the 1968 Winter Games.

Contributors: Tatiana Fedorova – a worker on the Moscow Metro. Mark Ovenden - author of Underground Cities. Patience Azuma – vaccinated as a child in Ghana. Dr Kofi Ahmed – chief medical officer. Harold Abrahams – Olympic medallist. Kitty Godfree – Olympic medallist. Zamzam Farah – Somali sprinter. André Thiennot - manufacturer of Shuss merchandise.

(Photo: Underground train station ceiling in Moscow. Credit: Lorenzo Di Cola/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

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Exploring space

Exploring space

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing in July 1969, five personal accounts of landmarks in space exploration. We hear from an Apollo flight controller about the moment Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, and from one of the astronauts who survived the Apollo 13 near disaster. Plus how Laika the dog became the first living creature in space, the pioneering woman cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, and Britain's attempt to put the Beagle 2 lander on Mars.PHOTO: Buzz Aldrin on the Moon in July 1969 (Getty Images)

20 Juli 201950min

Kenya's ivory inferno

Kenya's ivory inferno

Twelve tonnes of ivory was set alight by President Daniel Arap Moi in Nairobi National Park in July 1989, to highlight the threat from poaching. The ivory burn was organised by conservationists who wanted to save the world's elephants. Plus, the closure of Britain's ground-breaking Common Cold Unit; Cuba executes top military officers, the Chinese allow sales of tampons and the first modern lesbian.(Photo: Ivory tusks arranged in a pile and set alight. Credit: Andrew Holbrooke/Corbis/Getty Images)

13 Juli 201949min

Surviving Cambodia's 'Killing Fields'

Surviving Cambodia's 'Killing Fields'

Life under the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, the Germans kidnapped by the Contras in Nicaragua in the 80s, plus how Aboriginal women took on the Australian government against nuclear waste, Anita Hill's stand against the promotion of Judge Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court and the birth of the Sony Walkman.(PHOTO: CHOEUNG EK, CAMBODIA - 1993/02/01: Skulls are piled up at a monument situated outside Phnom Penh to serve as a constant reminder of the genocide under the Khmer Rouge during the Pol Pot years.. (Photo by Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket via Getty Images)

6 Juli 201950min

The Stonewall riot

The Stonewall riot

The riot that inspired the modern gay rights movement; Saddam Hussein's 1980s genocidal campaign against Iraq's Kurds; notorious British serial killers, Fred and Rose West; 50 years of fighting for fat people in America; and Joseph Heller on his seminal work, Catch-22.Picture: the Stonewall Inn today (Getty Images)

29 Juni 201949min

The assassination of Medgar Evers

The assassination of Medgar Evers

An African-American civil rights hero, a Chinese online star, the tragic icon of Iran's reform movement and archive recordings of the psychoanalyst CG Jung. Plus the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin's love of yoga.Photo:Roy Wilkins and Medgar Evers Being Arrested on 1st June 1963 in Jackson, Mississippi. Credit: Getty Images

22 Juni 201950min

The first anti-psychotic drug

The first anti-psychotic drug

How a 1950s drug helped revolutionise the treatment of mental illness. Also, how hundreds of thousands of Kosovans fled when NATO bombed former Yugoslavia. Plus, a monumental public artwork in post-Cold War Berlin, Chinese-American relations after WW2, and a trailblazing same sex wedding in the 1970s.Photo: Nurses prepare a patient for electric shock treatment in a psychiatric hospital. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Getty Images)

14 Juni 201949min

D-Day

D-Day

Eyewitness accounts of the Allied invasion of Nazi occupied Europe on D-day, 6th June 1944. We also hear how the BBC reported events on that momentous day. Plus Vikings in England, the Gurkhas fight for justice and discovering the fate of 'The Little Prince'Photo: The photo titled 'The Jaws of Death' shows a landing craft disembarking US troops on Omaha beach, 6th June 1944 ( Robert Sargent / US COAST GUARD)

8 Juni 201950min

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Tiananmen Square

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1 Juni 201950min

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