The atomic bombs dropped on Japan

Atomic bombs were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945

• 9 mins

The American who put women's rights in the Japanese constitution

How Beate Sirota Gordon got wording on gender equality into Japan's post-war constitution

• 9 mins

Radar and World War Two

How British women operated secret radar technology during World War Two

• 9 mins

Bremen’s Elephant Statue

How the German city addressed its colonial past by rededicating a famous monument

• 9 mins

Beirut's Hotel War

How the Lebanese Civil War came to Beirut's luxury hotel district in 1975.

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Scoring a victory for women's rights in Turkey

How Turkish campaigners forced a radical change in the law on crimes against women

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The invention of the modern ventilator

How a polio epidemic in Denmark in 1952 led to the invention of the modern ventilator

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Surviving Saddam

The memories of a young Iraqi woman who grew up in the dictator's inner social circle

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The lost King of England

How archaeologists discovered the lost grave of King Richard III under a car park

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The first modern asthma inhaler

Millions of people’s lives have been saved and improved by the metered dose inhaler.

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The Guatemalan syphilis scandal

How American doctors carried out secretive STD experiments in Guatemala in the 1940s

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The siege at Ruby Ridge

An 11-day standoff between a fugitive and the US government ended with three people dead.

• 9 mins

Margaret Ekpo - Nigeria's feminist pioneer

The trades union activist and politician who fought for Nigerian independence.

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America's first woman combat pilot

How Jeannie Leavitt became the first woman to fly a US Air Force fighter plane in 1993.

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Occupy Wall Street

How former policeman Ray Lewis joined the anti-inequality demonstrations in New York

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St Kilda

The remote Scottish islands whose last inhabitants were evacuated in August 1930

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Who has the right to vote in America?

The decision that quashed a key part of an electoral law designed to protect black voters

• 9 mins

Inventing James Bond

How author and former intelligence officer Ian Fleming created the British super-spy

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Flying through a volcano

How a British Airways jumbo jet flew through a volcanic ash cloud and survived

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The birth of the Sony Walkman

The portable tape player that brought music-on-the-move to millions was launched in 1979

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The Cape Town bombings

In the late 1990s there were more than 150 bomb attacks in the South African city

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Care in the Community

In the 1990s Britain closed down many of its long-stay hospitals and asylums

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The Dawson's Field hijacking

Barbara Mensch recalls how she was hijacked and held in Jordan in 1970

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Haiti's cholera outbreak

Haiti was cholera-free until UN peacekeepers brought it to the Caribbean country in 2010

• 9 mins

The birth of Reddit

In 2005 two young graduates created one of the internet's most popular websites.

• 9 mins

Banning alcohol in an Indian state

Punyavathi Sunkara recalls how the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh banned alcohol in 1995.

• 9 mins

Why the US rejected universal healthcare

After WW2 US President Harry Truman argued for healthcare for all but his plan failed.

• 9 mins

Resisting 'Europe's last dictator' in Belarus

Exiled dissident Nikolai Khalezin on the origins of the protest movement in Belarus

• 9 mins

The Mau Mau struggle against British rule

In the 1950s rebels took up arms to rid Kenya of colonial rule

• 9 mins

The Greensboro lunch counter sit-in

In 1960 four young black men began a protest against racial segregation in the USA.

• 9 mins