Desmond's - a sitcom that changed Britain

The story of our times told by the people who were there.

• 9 mins

The Battle of Lewisham

How anti-racists stopped a far-right march in South London in 1977.

• 9 mins

The launch of CNN

1980 saw the launch of the first TV station dedicated to 24 hour news.

• 9 mins

The end of the Lebanese Civil War

On October 13th 1990 the fifteen year long conflict in Lebanon finally came to an end

• 9 mins

The last of the Kazakh herders

Many of the nomadic herders in Kazakhstan left the USSR and moved to China in the 1920s

• 9 mins

The US Voting Rights Act of 1965

The landmark legislation was introduced to ensure the rights of African Americans to vote

• 9 mins

Saddam Hussein's big movie project

Behind the scenes at the Iraqi-funded, Clash of Loyalties

• 9 mins

Why Portugal decriminalised all drugs

In the grip of a drugs crisis, the country took a radical approach in 2001.

• 9 mins

Joan Littlewood, 'mother of modern British theatre'

The working class woman who shook up the British theatre establishment

• 9 mins

The Cutter Incident

How mistakes with the initial production of polio vaccine made thousands of children ill.

• 9 mins

The missing victims of apartheid

How a South African team is searching for those who disappeared during apartheid rule

• 9 mins

Nasa's pioneering black women

The mathematicians who worked behind the scenes on the American space programme

• 9 mins

Nasa's pioneering black women

The mathematicians who worked behind the scenes on the American space programme

• 8 mins

When JFK won the US presidency

The US election of 1960 was a close race between John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

• 9 mins

Shirley Chisholm - the black woman who tried to be president

The pioneering politician who launched a run for the US presidency in 1972.

• 9 mins

The Watergate scandal

The investigation that led to the resignation of US President Richard Nixon in 1974.

• 9 mins

Ronald Reagan and the Moral Majority

How US religious conservatives organised in the 1970s to get Republicans elected.

• 9 mins

With the president on 9/11

How former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card broke news of 9/11 to President Bush

• 9 mins

The sex musical that wowed New York and London

In 1969 a theatrical revue called Oh Calcutta opened. It featured male and female nudity.

• 9 mins

'I just wanted to be white'

Growing up as a black child in post-war Germany

• 9 mins

The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin

The Israeli PM was shot by an extremist opposed to the peace process on November 4th 1995

• 9 mins

The 1945 Pan-African Congress

How a meeting in Manchester shaped the post-war struggle against colonialism

• 9 mins

The church that rose from the rubble

Reconstructing Dresden's historic baroque church.

• 9 mins

The Guerrilla Girls

The women who launched an anonymous poster campaign against sexism and racism in art.

• 9 mins

Makaton - the signing system that changes lives

The creation of a communication system for people with learning difficulties in the 1970s

• 9 mins

World War One in Africa

Rare recordings of African veterans of WW1 in East Africa

• 9 mins

When Pluto lost its planet status

An international committee of astronomers agreed Pluto wasn't really a planet in 2006

• 9 mins

The 'good enough' mother

Donald Winnicott helped mothers understand babies through psychoanalysis in the 1940s.

• 9 mins

Captured by Somali pirates

Captain Colin Darch and his crew were held hostage by pirates for 47 days in 2008

• 14 mins

The world's first woman premier

In 1960 Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka became the world's first woman Prime Minister

• 9 mins