The IRA siege at Balcombe Street
In December 1975, four members of one of the IRA’s deadliest units were chased by police through the streets of London before hiding out in a small flat owned by a middle-aged couple called John and S...
10 Dec 20199min
The battle of the Louvre pyramid
In 1983 French president Francois Mitterand commissioned a major renovation of Paris' most famous art museum, the Louvre. But the resulting great glass pyramid, designed by American architect IM Pei, ...
9 Dec 20199min
The Cuban writer who defied Fidel Castro
On 7 December 1990 the dissident Cuban novelist and poet Reinaldo Arenas killed himself in New York after years of suffering from AIDS. Before fleeing Cuba, Arenas had been jailed for his homosexualit...
6 Dec 201910min
Jaslyk – Uzbekistan’s infamous prison
A prison camp called Jaslyk opened in the desert in western Uzbekistan in 1999. Even by the standards of the Uzbek prison system it would become notorious for torture and human rights abuses, includin...
5 Dec 20199min
The British sculptor who won over the world
During the 20th century a British coal miner's son changed the world of art. Henry Moore revolutionised sculpture, altering the way we view the human figure and setting his works in natural landscapes...
4 Dec 20199min
Shackleton
Hear first hand accounts from the doomed Antarctic expedition which became a legendary story of survival. In 1914, polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton led an expedition to become the first to cross t...
3 Dec 201911min
The killing of Pablo Escobar
The Colombian drug trafficker, once one of the richest men in the world, was shot dead by police on 2nd December 1993. He had been on the run from the authorities for over a year. Jordan Dunbar has be...
2 Dec 20199min
The first confirmed case of HIV in America
Robert R was a teenager who died of a mysterious illness in Saint Louis, Missouri in 1969. It was only in the 1980s that doctors studying the Aids epidemic realised Robert had died of Aids. Ned Carter...
29 Nov 20198min
