The launch of the Hubble Space Telescope

Putting an observatory in space; China's cure for malaria; the "Red Scare" in Hollywood.

• 53 mins

The AIDS memorial quilt - a patchwork of loss

How an LGBTQ+ activist decided to commemorate lost friends with a quilt.

• 53 mins

Women in the law

Trailblazing British lawyer Rose Heilbron, plus Muslims in China and a Swedish warship

• 53 mins

How technology revolutionised our lives

Memories of milestones from webcams to social networks, from the iPhone to home-shopping.

• 53 mins

Apollo 13: The drama that gripped the world

50 years since the near disaster on the Apollo 13 mission to the Moon.

• 53 mins

The last survivor of the transatlantic slave trade

The grandson of the last US slave, Pakistan's welfare hero and the Deepwater disaster.

• 53 mins

The 1957 flu pandemic

A million die in 1957 flu, conflict in the Galapagos islands and trees in Hiroshima.

• 53 mins

VE Day Special

Eyewitness accounts of the fall of Nazi Germany and the end of World War Two in Europe.

• 53 mins

Fighting for the pill in Japan

Why it took until 1999 for Japanese women to be allowed to take the contraceptive pill.

• 53 mins

Britain's World War Two crime wave

How criminals thrived in London during the Blitz, 3D printers and the 1980 Miami riots.

• 53 mins

The Gwangju massacre

South Korea's Gwangju uprising; changing the way we eat; plus protecting Congo's forests

• 53 mins

The Zanzibar revolution

How a bloody revolution changed East Africa, the start of the WHO and remembering Christo

• 53 mins

Black American History Special

Key moments in African American history - civil rights, basketball and the 3 strikes law.

• 53 mins

Sex trafficking and peacekeepers

A UN sex trafficking scandal in Bosnia, the Five Stages of Grief, and Beethoven in China.

• 53 mins

Dealing with economic crisis

How countries from around the world dealt with economic turmoil in the 20th century.

• 53 mins

Quarantined in a TB sanatorium

Quarantined in a TB sanatorium; looted Nazi art works and the Rolling Stones in the dock

• 53 mins

The 1960s report that warned the USA was racist

A government report into the riots of 1967 warned that white racism was dividing America

• 53 mins

South Korea's 1980s prison camps

The horrors of a so-called Social Purification project and the birth of Club Med

• 53 mins

The Million Man March

Black Americans march on Washington, and the first Afghan women's refuge.

• 53 mins

Adrift for 76 Days

Surviving the Atlantic in a liferaft, Spain's 1960s tourism boom, the death of Himmler

• 53 mins

The Second World War in Japan

It’s 75 years since the US dropped atomic bombs on Japan, leading to the end of WW2.

• 53 mins

Beirut's hotel war

Lebanon's civil war comes to Beirut's luxury hotel district, plus the first ventilators

• 53 mins

The siege at Ruby Ridge

The standoff that galvanised the US far-right; plus, growing up with Saddam Hussein.

• 53 mins

Margaret Ekpo - Nigeria's feminist pioneer

The woman who fought for Nigerian independence plus the former policeman turned protestor

• 53 mins

Inventing James Bond

Ian Fleming and the genesis of James Bond and the birth of the Sony Walkman

• 53 mins

Prohibition in India

How the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh banned alcohol in 1995 plus the birth of Reddit

• 53 mins

Stories of resistance and protest from around the world

Different protest stories from China, Belarus, Kenya, USA and Argentina

• 53 mins

Blackwater killed my son

How US private security guards killed 14 Iraqi civilians; plus Florida's election chaos

• 53 mins

The Mafia and Italian politics

The trial which linked a senior Italian politician to the Mafia plus the birth of Google.

• 53 mins

British black history special

The voyage of the Empire Windrush, the battle of Lewisham and the creation of Desmond's

• 53 mins