An American scientist began recording carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in 1958 Read more
Now playing
Proving climate change: The Keeling curve
An American scientist began recording carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in 1958
Mexico City slashes car use
How Mexico City cut its dangerously high air pollution levels
The man who fed the world
Dr Norman Borlaug’s pioneering work on disease-resistant grains saved millions.
Britain's worst nuclear accident
A reactor caught fire at the Windscale nuclear plant in the north of England in 1957
Wangari Maathai Nobel Prize-winning environmentalist
Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai fought to save forests and protect human rights
The legalisation of Solidarity
The Polish trade union organisation was banned by the communists until April 1989
The reburial of a Hungarian hero
The body of Imre Nagy who had led the Hungarian Uprising was reburied in 1989
East German refugees in the Prague embassy
Thousands of East Germans sought refuge in the West German embassy in Prague in 1989.
The Leipzig demonstrations
The Berlin Wall fell just a month after mass protests in the East German city of Leipzig
The fall of the Berlin Wall
The border between communist East Germany and the West opened on November 9th 1989
Margaret Thatcher's anti-Europe speech
The British Prime Minister started expressing doubts about the European Union in 1988
The Paris hotel that hosted Holocaust survivors
The Hotel Lutetia became a reception centre for French Holocaust survivors after WW2
The Algerians who fought with France
When Algeria won independence in 1962 thousands of local French allies faced persecution
'Jane' - the underground abortion service
An underground feminist network performed illegal abortions in 1960s Chicago.
Saving the Great Barrier Reef
The 1960s campaigners who fought the government to save the world's biggest coral reef.
Iran hostage crisis: the humanitarian delegation
How Iranian students invited a group of Americans to Iran to meet the hostages
A ground-breaking change to treating breast cancer
How a Canadian oncologist proved the effectiveness of breast-conserving surgery
Britain's secret propaganda war
How sex, jazz and 'fake news' were used to undermine the Nazis in World War Two
The Bhagalpur blindings
How Indian police tortured petty criminals, blinding them permanently
The concert that rocked the Berlin Wall
The 1987 rock concert that led to the first shouts in East Berlin of 'the wall must go'
Memories of Wilfred Owen
The British war poet's younger brother Harold Owen spoke to the BBC in the 1960s
Cap Anamur: A rescue that led to jail
Why a captain was arrested after saving shipwrecked Africans in the Mediterranean in 2004
The demolition of the Babri Masjid
How Hindu extremists demolished a mosque in India prompting months of communal violence
The Love Canal disaster
How the Love Canal neigbourhood in the US came to symbolise the dangers of toxic waste
The first Indian to win Miss World
Reita Faria was the first Indian to win the Miss World beauty competition in 1966
The first Tasers
Why Los Angeles police began using a new weapon in the early 1980s.
The 'Woman in Gold'
How one of Klimt's most famous paintings was returned to the family who'd owned it
I saw the soldiers who killed El Salvador's priests
Lucia Cerna was the only witness to a murder that shocked El Salvador in November 1989
The man who got Delhi on track
India's capital city built a Metro to tackle its traffic and air pollution problems
Exploring Arabia's Empty Quarter
How Wilfred Thesiger travelled in one of the world's harshest environments in the 1940s.
The man who gave his voice to Stephen Hawking
American scientist Dennis Klatt pioneered synthesised speech using his own voice.
India's economic revolution
In the 1990s India began to open up its state-controlled economy
From cakes to computers
How the Lyons catering company pioneered LEO, the first electronic office system
Handing back Uluru
In 1985 Australia's famous natural landmark Uluru was returned to aboriginal ownership
The first confirmed case of HIV in America
Robert R was a teenager who died of an undiagnosed illness in Missouri in 1969
The killing of Pablo Escobar
The Colombian drug trafficker was shot dead by police on December 2nd 1993
Shackleton
How a doomed Antarctic expedition in 1914 became a legendary story of survival
The British sculptor who won over the world
Henry Moore revolutionised sculpture by creating immense works and setting them outside.
Jaslyk – Uzbekistan’s infamous prison
A prison camp in the Uzbek desert became notorious for torture and human rights abuses.
The Cuban writer who defied Fidel Castro
In 1990 Reinaldo Arenas died of Aids in New York, leaving behind a powerful autobiography
The battle of the Louvre pyramid
How Paris was eventually won round to the Louvre museum's great glass pyramid
The IRA siege at Balcombe Street
In December 1975, the IRA took a middle-aged couple hostage in Central London.
The 'Awakenings' medical experiment
In the 1960s a new drug briefly woke up patients who'd been catatonic for decades.
The killing of Amadou Diallo
When New York police shot a young immigrant 41 times, thousands took to the streets
The attack on India's parliament
In December 2001 armed men attacked India's parliamentary compound in broad daylight