Italo disco

In 1978, British showbusiness star, Debbie McGee was a dancer with the Iranian National Ballet Company.Debbie was living in the capital, Tehran, at the start of the Iranian revolution. She tells Gill Kearsley the story of how she dealt with the unrest and escaped the country.Debbie, who went on to marry British magician Paul Daniels, said: "I would never have met my late husband if that hadn't happened... so I've got the ayatollah to thank for that."(Photo: Debbie McGee in 2018. Credit: Dave Benett/Getty Images for The Old Vic Theatre)

7 Nov 202310min

In August 2004, more than 300 people died when a supermarket caught fire in Paraguay's capital, Asunción.It is seen as the country's worst peacetime disaster.Tatiana Gabaglio escaped the fire. She speaks to Ben Henderson.(Photo: Mourners gathering after the Ycuá Bolaños fire. Credit: Norberto Duarte/AFP via Getty Images)

6 Nov 20239min

On 5 November, 1985 some of the world's top designers and music stars joined together in a special event at London’s Royal Albert Hall to raise money for drought-hit Ethiopia.The rock star Freddie Mercury and the actress Jane Seymour were chosen to model the bridal collection of David and Elizabeth Emanuel.Jane Seymour tells Josephine McDermott what it was like to play the role of Freddie Mercury's bride for a fashion spectacular.(Photo: Jane Seymour and Freddie Mercury at Fashion Aid. Credit: Getty Images)

3 Nov 202311min

In 1986 Dr Aleida Guevara, the daughter of revolutionary icon Che Guevara, went to Angola to work as a paediatrician.Dr Aleida was one of a number of medics Fidel Castro’s Cuban government sent to their fellow communist country in southern Africa as it emerged from Portuguese colonialism into civil war.Marcia Veiga hears how Dr Aleida treated children with cholera in a hospital in the Angolan capital Luanda.Dr Aleida also reveals how, during downtime from working as Cuba’s minister of industries, her tired father played with her by carrying her on his back as if he were a horse.The music for this programme is from Dadifox and Receba.(Photo: Dr Aleida Guevara with a patient at Luanda’s Josina Machel Hospital. Credit: Dr Aleida Guevara)

2 Nov 20239min

On 23 March 1962, a prototype of the first cockpit flight recorder, the black box, was tested in Australia. In the early 1950s, fuel scientist David Warren, who worked in the Australian government’s aeronautical research laboratories, attended a talk about the reasons for a recent plane crash. David thought that if only he could speak to a survivor, he’d have a much better idea of what caused the crash and could prevent future ones. This led him to develop a recorder that would collect vital information of the last few hours before a plane goes down. Today the modern equivalent of the black box is compulsory equipment on passenger planes all over the world. In 2015, David’s children, Jenny and Peter Warren, and a former colleague, Bill Schofield, spoke with Catherine Davis about how his idea changed air travel forever. (Photo: The flight data recorder known as a black box used in aircraft. Credit: Getty Images)

1 Nov 202310min

In 1983, scientists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris became the first to identify the HIV virus. It was a vital step in fighting one of the worst epidemics in modern history, AIDS.The Pasteur had been asked to investigate after reports of a mystery disease that was spreading rapidly, particularly among the gay community.Two weeks later, scientist Françoise Barré-Sinoussi detected the virus while working on a biopsy sample in the laboratory. She and the team leader, Luc Montagnier were later awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine.But the discovery could easily have been missed, as she tells Jane Wilkinson.(Photo: French virologists Jean-Claude Chermann, Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier. Credit: Michel Philippot/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)

31 Okt 202310min

In 2010, a $3.6billion fund was launched to stop oil drilling in the most biodiverse place on the planet: the Yasuni national park in Ecuador.The Yasuni covers 10,000 square kilometres of Amazon rainforest and is home to thousands of species of plants and animals but underneath the soil lies another important resource - 20% of Ecuador’s oil reserves. It was feared that any drilling would cause pollution, deforestation and soil erosion so in a pioneering deal – known as the Yasuni ITT iniatitive - rich nations were asked to pay Ecuador not to remove the oil. Chief negotiator Ivonne A-Baki was put in charge of raising funds from around the globe but securing money was not an easy task, as she tells Jane Wilkinson.(Photo: A brown woolly monkey in the Yasuni National Park. Credit: Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP via Getty Images)

30 Okt 202310min

In 2013, environmental protests in Gezi Park, Istanbul led to civil unrest across Turkey.For one protestor, a post he made on social media led to a dramatic outcome.Memet Ali Alabora, was an activist and a famous actor in Turkey. He tells his story to Gill Kearsley.(Photo: Protestors construct a barricade in Istanbul. Credit: Ayman Oghanna/Getty Images)

27 Okt 20239min