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Cuba's blindness epidemic

Up to 50,000 Cubans were inexplicably struck down with sight loss in the early 1990s

• 9 mins

Britain's wartime gold

When Britain went to war with Germany in 1939 it had to find somewhere to keep its wealth

• 9 mins

The famine in North Korea

After the fall of the Soviet Union communist North Korea suffered a famine in the 1990s

• 9 mins

The first World Romani Congress

Roma people from all around Europe met up in England in 1971

• 9 mins

The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior

In July 1985 the Greenpeace boat was bombed in New Zealand by French secret agents

• 9 mins

The race for the jet engine

Inspiration, rejection and war - a personal account of the invention of the jet engine

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Prisoner of the Cultural Revolution

Kim Gordon and his parents were locked up for two years in a hotel in China in the 1960s

• 9 mins

Jane Goodall and chimpanzees

How a young Englishwoman followed her dream to study chimpanzees in Africa

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When the Taliban took Kabul

Taliban fighters first took control of Afghanistan's capital city Kabul in 1996

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England's summer of riots

How six weeks of race riots gripped towns in northern England in 2001

• 9 mins

Domestic violence in Brazil

In 2006 Brazil passed the ground-breaking 'Maria da Penha law' to tackle domestic abuse

• 9 mins

The Battle of Gondar

In 1941, Italian colonial rule in Africa ended after a last stand by Mussolini's soldiers

• 9 mins

Surviving Norway's day of terror

Lisa Husby recalls running for her life from far-right extremist Anders Breivik

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When war came to Darfur

How a 13-year-old boy's life was changed by the war in Darfur in Sudan

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The paintings of Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh's great-great nephew recalls growing up among his paintings

• 9 mins

Japan's Bullet Train

Japanese railways launched the fastest train the world had ever seen in October 1964

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The birth of Karaoke

The man who invented the Karaoke machine speaks to Witness History

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The soldier who never surrendered

A Japanese soldier hid in the jungle in Guam for nearly 30 years after World War Two

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Fighting for the pill in Japan

Why did it take so long for the oral contraceptive pill to be legalised in Japan?

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The Tsunami and Fukushima

How an earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan and triggered a nuclear emergency in 2011

• 9 mins

Dorothy Butler Gilliam: American news pioneer

The first African American woman to be hired as a reporter by the Washington Post

• 9 mins

Chipko: India’s tree-hugging women

How a grassroots environmental movement won its fight against deforestation in India

• 9 mins

Escaping Nigeria’s Civil War

Patti Boulaye recalls frightening times as a 13-year-old girl in the Biafran War in 1967.

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Afghanistan's battle of the airwaves

When the Taliban fell in 2001 Afghans could listen to music and news again

• 9 mins

Gay activism in 1990s India

Pawan Dhall helped form the Counsel Club, one of India's first gay support groups

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The building of the Berlin Wall

In August 1961, East Germany began building the wall that symbolised Cold War Europe

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Escaping from East Berlin

East Germans used all sorts of methods to escape from communism across the Berlin Wall

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Exiled from East Germany: Wolf Biermann

East Germany's most famous singer-songwriter was exiled to the West in 1976

• 9 mins

East Germany's nudists

The communist regime restricted many things in the GDR but not the freedom to go naked

• 9 mins

Inside an East German jail

Vera Lengsfeld was imprisoned by the communist authorities in East Germany in 1988

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