The origin of the WHO

How the cold war helped shape the creation of the WHO and what role China played.

• 9 mins

The portable defibrillator

How Northern Irish doctor Frank Pantridge revolutionised heart-attack treatment.

• 9 mins

Brown v the Board of Education

A landmark case about racial segregation in the USA.

• 9 mins

The 16th Street church bombing

Four young black girls were killed in a racist attack on a church in Alabama in 1963

• 9 mins

Black basketball pioneers - Texas Western

How an all-black college team overturned racist assumptions about basketball in the USA

• 9 mins

Rodney King and the LA riots

People rioted in Los Angeles after police who had assaulted a black man were acquitted

• 9 mins

Three Strikes Law

One man's experience of the controversial US law that saw thousands locked up for life

• 14 mins

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and the Five Stages of Grief

The remarkable Swiss psychiatrist who changed the way we think about dying.

• 9 mins

Beethoven's role in China's Cultural Revolution

Chairman Mao banned all classical music in 1966, but some musicians defied the order.

• 9 mins

Sex trafficking and peacekeepers

Whistle-blowers implicated UN peacekeepers in sex trafficking in Bosnia in the late 90s

• 9 mins

The friendship train

The passenger train service between India and Bangladesh was resumed after 43 years.

• 9 mins

The ‘Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes’ anti-racist exercise

A teacher decided to separate pupils according to eye colour to teach them about racism.

• 9 mins

The New Deal

How the USA used public spending projects to battle through the Great Depression

• 9 mins

South Korea's economic miracle

How a poor, war-ravaged nation became a global economic powerhouse

• 14 mins

Tanzania's socialist experiment

In the 1960s Tanzania tried out a new form of socialism called Ujamaa

• 9 mins

The Chilean economy and its 'Chicago Boys'

Thinkers trained in free-market economics in Chicago shaped Chile after its military coup

• 9 mins

Russia’s bitter taste of capitalism

Chaos and hardship hit Russia with the sudden market reforms of early 1992.

• 9 mins

Jana Andolan – Nepal’s people power movement

A people’s movement brought an end to Nepal’s absolute monarchy in 1990.

• 9 mins

The Rolling Stones drugs trial

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards went on trial for drugs offences in June 1967

• 9 mins

Quarantined in a TB sanatorium

The life of a nine-year-old girl quarantined in a TB sanatorium for 4 years in the 1950s

• 9 mins

The lost Nazi-era art trove

How a secret collection of art missing since Nazi rule was found in Germany in 2012

• 13 mins

How South Africa banned skin-lightening creams

In 1990, South Africa banned skin-lightening creams containing hydroquinone

• 9 mins

The doctor who discovered how cholera spread

How Dr John Snow found out the cholera bug was spread through contaminated water in 1854.

• 9 mins

The unlawful death of Christopher Alder

The black former soldier choked to death on the floor of a British police station in 1998

• 9 mins

Montreal's 'Night of Terror'

When the city's police force went on strike there was looting and rioting in the streets.

• 9 mins

The death of Frida Kahlo

In July 1954 the great Mexican artist died after years of illness. She was just 47.

• 9 mins

The 1960s report that warned the USA was racist

A US government report into the riots of 1967 blamed white racism for creating ghettos

• 9 mins

The fight for women's prayer rights in Israel

A Jewish feminist group's campaign to pray freely at the Western Wall in Jerusalem

• 9 mins

How Club Med changed holidays

Holidaymakers arrived at the first Club Med resort in Majorca in summer 1950

• 9 mins

Returning Ethiopia's looted history

The Stele of Axum, a 4th century Ethiopian treasure, was returned by Italy in 2005

• 9 mins