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Peace Activist Samantha Smith

A child dreams of world peace and writes a letter to the leader of the Soviet Union

• 10 mins

Bologna bomb

In August 1980 a huge bomb destroyed much of Bologna railway station in Italy

• 10 mins

The Voyage of the Kon-Tiki

In 1947 a Norwegian adventurer sailed across the Pacific on a wooden raft

• 10 mins

Exodus of Asians from Uganda

In 1972 the dictator Idi Amin announced that all Asians had 90 days to leave Uganda

• 10 mins

Britain's first nudist beach

In August 1979 the seaside town of Brighton decided to open a nudist beach

• 10 mins

Wayne Gretzky

He was a Canadian sporting superstar but in 1988 he was sold to an American team

• 10 mins

Expulsion of the Chagos Islanders

A Chagos Islander talks of Britain's expulsion of his people from their homeland.

• 10 mins

Napster

It is 10 years since the closure of the world's first music-sharing website - Napster

• 10 mins

The Building of the Berlin Wall

On 13 August 1961, East German soldiers and construction workers began the Berlin Wall

• 10 mins

The Goons

It is 60 years since The Goon Show first hit the airwaves

• 10 mins

The Great Depression

During the 1930s the people of the US faced widespread economic hardship

• 10 mins

The Hungarian Picnic

The picnic that led to the first breaches of the Iron Curtain in 1989

• 10 mins

The Moscow Coup

The failed attempt to overthrow the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachov in August 1991

• 10 mins

The UN Baghdad bomb

The bomb that destroyed the UN headquarters in Baghdad in 2003.

• 10 mins

Stealing the Mona Lisa

The theft of the Mona Lisa from the museum of the Louvre in Paris in August 1911

• 10 mins

Dr Spock: Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care

Dr Spock's Baby and Child Care, the book that revolutionised child care.

• 10 mins

South African Student Sit-in Against Apartheid Injustice

White students in apartheid South Africa stage a sit-in protest against racial injustice.

• 10 mins

Woodstock Festival 1969

A pivotal moment in American popular culture - the Woodstock festival of 1969.

• 10 mins

Child evacuees from the Spanish Civil War

How thousands of Basque children were evacuated to Britain during the Spanish Civil War.

• 10 mins

Cameroon's Lake Nyos Disaster

How villagers awoke to find hundreds of friends and neighbours mysteriously dead

• 10 mins

The Freedom Riders

The story of an extraordinary act of courage by the civil rights leader Martin Luther King

• 9 mins

Drop City

The hippy commune in Colorado in the Summer of Love, 1967.

• 10 mins

Libya's Coup - 1969

The coup that brought Colonel Gaddafi to power in Libya.

• 10 mins

The Scoop of the Century

The scoop of the century on the eve of World War II.

• 10 mins

The Women of Greenham Common

How an anti-nuclear march turned into a peace camp based outside a US airbase in the UK

• 10 mins

Assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd

It is 45 years since the South African Prime Minister was killed in Parliament.

• 10 mins

Great Fire of London

In 1666, a fire destroyed much of the city of London. Two diarists recorded what happened.

• 10 mins

An Azerbaijani View of the Demise of the Soviet Union

How the collapse of the Soviet Union played out in the life of a teenager in Azerbaijan.

• 10 mins

The Assassination of Ahmed Shah Massood

Two days before 9/11, al-Qaeda killed an Afghan anti-Taliban leader.

• 10 mins

The 1980 Turkey coup

On 12 September 1980, the military took control of Turkey.

• 10 mins