Marcel Proust

The great French writer remembered by one of his friends and by his faithful maid.

• 9 mins

Mozambique's Eduardo Mondlane: From professor to freedom fighter

The leader of Mozambique's fight against colonial rule remembered by his daughter

• 9 mins

The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff

In January 1945, nearly 10,000 people died in the worst maritime disaster in history.

• 9 mins

India's freedom fighter: Subhas Chandra Bose

The man who campaigned against colonial rule, allying himself with Hitler during WW2

• 9 mins

Kazakhstan's nuclear legacy

The secret plan to clear a huge nuclear testing site after the fall of the Soviet Union.

• 9 mins

Malick Sidibé: Mali's superstar photographer

How a Malian photographer's pictures of Mali's swinging '60s and '70s amazed the world.

• 9 mins

Costa Concordia

The dramatic story of the cruise ship which sunk in the Mediterranean, killing 32 people.

• 9 mins

The first silicone breast implants

How a Texas woman became the first in the world to have the popular cosmetic procedure.

• 9 mins

The rise of Boko Haram

How a small Nigerian Islamist group launched a brutal insurgency

• 9 mins

The first bicycle-sharing scheme

How a Dutch engineer invented a scheme to share bikes and cut pollution in the 1960s.

• 9 mins

The Stanford Prison Experiment

The story of the famous psychology study, the Stanford Prison Experiment, of 1971

• 9 mins

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

The story of Coretta Scott King’s campaign to have her late husband honoured in the US.

• 9 mins

A Cold War love affair

The story of a West German woman who crossed the Iron Curtain for love.

• 9 mins

British troops in Northern Ireland

The British army was sent to keep the peace in 1969; it stayed for nearly four decades.

• 9 mins

Bloody Sunday

How British paratroopers opened fired on a civil rights march in Northern Ireland in 1972

• 9 mins

The Grand Hotel Bombing

The IRA tried to kill Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet in October 1984.

• 9 mins

IRA gun-running in America

How an undercover FBI agent bust an IRA gun-running operation in New York in 1981

• 9 mins

The Good Friday Agreement

The frantic last-minute negotiations that led to a peace deal for Northern Ireland.

• 9 mins

Kazakhstan's new capital

The story of Kazakhstan's new capital

• 9 mins

The murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl

The reporter who was killed by Islamist extremists in Pakistan while investigating 9/11.

• 9 mins

The day the world looked up

In 2012 a rare astronomical event occurred when Venus flew past the Sun

• 9 mins

The first Emirati female teacher

The trailblazing story of the first Emirati born teacher

• 9 mins

The Death of King George VI

How Britain marked the death of its wartime monarch and the accession of Queen Elizabeth

• 9 mins

The demise of the Soviet Union

How the leaders of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus plotted to break up the USSR in 1991.

• 9 mins

The invention of Google Maps

How the revolutionary online mapping service was created in 2005.

• 9 mins

Shoe designer Manolo Blahnik

How the Spaniard became a legend in the world of ultra-fashionable shoes.

• 9 mins

Ukraine's 'Maidan Revolution'

Throughout the winter of 2013/14 protesters camped out in the centre of Kyiv

• 9 mins

The 1972 mass killings in Burundi

In 1972 Burundi’s Tusti led army massacred Hutu civilians following a Hutu led uprising

• 9 mins

The first LGBT film in war-torn Yugoslavia

How the ground-breaking film "Marble Ass" was made amid war in the former Yugoslavia

• 9 mins

"Don't ask, don't tell" in the US Armed Forces

For decades LGBT people in the US military had to keep their sexuality secret.

• 9 mins

The Berlin Patient

Timothy Ray Brown was the first person in the world to be cured of HIV/AIDS.

• 9 mins

Bollywood's pioneering lesbian drama

"Fire" was one of the first films in Indian history to depict a lesbian relationship.

• 9 mins

The world's first civil union

In 1989, Denmark became the first country to celebrate same-sex civil unions

• 9 mins

The first sex worker strike

When 200 French sex workers took refuge in a church in Lyon, it started a movement.

• 9 mins

Nixon in China

The historic visit by the American president which normalised US relations with China.

• 9 mins

The Navajo Code Talkers in World War 2

The Native American soldiers who talked in a secret code, helping the Allies to victory

• 9 mins

The death of Trayvon Martin

The black Florida teenager killed by a Neighbourhood Watch volunteer while buying sweets.

• 9 mins

The 2014 annexation of Crimea

A personal account of how Russia took over the Crimean peninsula in 2014

• 9 mins

Economic 'shock therapy' in Russia

Chaos and hardship hit Russia when free-market reforms were introduced overnight in 1992

• 9 mins

Putin's war in Chechnya

An eyewitness account of the Russian invasion of the breakaway republic in 1999

• 9 mins

Boris Yeltsin's surprise resignation

How the Russian president quit and apologised to the nation in a New Year's Eve address.

• 9 mins

The takeover of NTV in Russia

How NTV journalists tried in vain to keep their station out of President Putin's control.

• 9 mins

Russia's war in Georgia in 2008

First-hand accounts of Russia's battle with another former Soviet republic in 2008.

• 9 mins

Anna Akhmatova - Voice of Russia

How the great poet kept writing even through the darkest days of Soviet history.

• 9 mins

Gloria Steinem and Ms Magazine

The launch of the first magazine in America owned, run and written by women

• 9 mins

The Australian women who protested against the Vietnam war

The Fairlea Five were jailed in 1971 for campaigning against military conscription.

• 9 mins

Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi

The Iranian human rights lawyer who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003: Dr Shirin Ebadi

• 9 mins

The Wages for Housework campaign

How feminists in Italy began an international campaign for payment for housework in 1972.

• 9 mins

The Frauenkirche - Dresden's symbol of war and reconstruction

The story of the painstaking project to rebuild Dresden's historic baroque church.

• 9 mins

Chandigarh: India's city of the future

How the modernist architect Le Corbusier designed a city for newly-independent India

• 9 mins

Teheran's Freedom Tower

The vast monument built for the Shah, but now a centrepiece for protests in Iran.

• 9 mins

Zaha Hadid's Cincinnati Arts Center

The ground-breaking building was the first American museum to be designed by a woman

• 9 mins

The Shard

The building of the controversial London skyscraper, designed by Italian Renzo Piano.

• 9 mins

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster

In 1986, a reactor exploded in Soviet Ukraine causing the worst nuclear accident ever.

• 9 mins

The Budapest Memorandum

The security "assurances" offered to Ukraine after it gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994

• 9 mins

The Holodomor: Ukraine's great famine

Several million people died in the 1930s in what became known as The Holodomor

• 9 mins

Ukraine's Babi Yar massacre

The mass killing of Ukrainian Jews by Nazi Germany during World War Two.

• 9 mins

Soviet holidays in Crimea

Artek, on the Black Sea coast, was the Soviet Union's most popular children's camp.

• 9 mins

The 'Snow Revolution' against Vladimir Putin

A decade ago protestors tried to stop the Russian leader tightening his grip on power

• 9 mins

The black stunt performers who took on Hollywood

The battle to fight prejudice behind-the-scenes in the American film industry.

• 9 mins

Afghanistan's women's newspaper

Aina-E-Zan, or Women's Mirror, was launched in 2002 at a time of hope for Afghan women.

• 9 mins

Selling Van Gogh's Sunflowers

How one of the Dutch artist's masterpieces was auctioned for a world record in 1987.

• 9 mins

Escaping a Maoist cult

Aravindan Balakrishnan ran a cult in London for 30 years; then two of its members fled.

• 9 mins

The Falklands War - An islander's account

A local radio broadcaster remembers keeping calm as Argentine troops invaded his studio.

• 9 mins

The Falklands War - an Argentine account

An Argentine conscript remembers his country's doomed military campaign in 1982.

• 9 mins

The Soviet Union's Afghan War

How what Moscow planned as a short military operation turned into the Soviet "Vietnam".

• 9 mins

The handshake in Space

How Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts met up in space during the Cold War

• 9 mins

The Great American Grain Robbery

How a catastrophic trade deal between the US and Moscow sparked a global food price shock

• 9 mins

Nato intervenes in Kosovo

How the US and its allies backed air strikes against Serbian forces to stop atrocities.

• 9 mins

The largest war crimes trial in history

The former Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, went on trial at The Hague in 2002.

• 9 mins

Greece's Great Famine

How hundreds of thousands of Greeks starved to death under Nazi occupation.

• 9 mins

How Tinder changed the dating game

How the dating app with the swipe revolutionised the world of online romance

• 9 mins

The World Wide Web

How the World Wide Web was created

• 9 mins

Erasmus: Europe's student exchange scheme

The programme that's let millions of EU students live and study in other countries.

• 9 mins

Women's rights in Basra

How women in the southern Iraqi city were persecuted for "anti-Islamic" behaviour

• 9 mins

Britain's Soviet spy scandal

In 1971 during the Cold War, the UK expelled 90 Soviet diplomats suspected of spying.

• 9 mins

Iranian revolution: The Kurdish uprising

A boy caught up in the forgotten battle for Kurdish autonomy in Iran in 1979

• 9 mins

The battle for Kinder Scout

How workers in Manchester fought for the right to walk in the nearby countryside.

• 9 mins

Algeria’s Milk Bar Bomber

Zohra Drif targeted an ice-cream parlour in Algiers during the war of independence

• 9 mins

The War in Algeria: A French soldier's experience

A first-hand account of the brutal French tactics against Algerian independence fighters

• 9 mins

Algeria: The Massacre in Paris

How French police turned on Algerian demonstrators in Paris in 1961, killing dozens.

• 9 mins

The Algerians who fought for France

The bitter experiences of the fighters who opposed their own country's independence.

• 9 mins

Algeria's rebel footballers

Algerian players secretly left their French clubs to form their own national team in 1958

• 9 mins

The sinking of the Belgrano

An Argentine survivor remembers being torpedoed by the British during the Falklands War.

• 9 mins

Surviving the Falkands War

British soldier Simon Weston was severely burned in an Argentine attack in 1982.

• 9 mins

Roe v Wade

How a young lawyer from Texas got the US abortion laws changed in 1973

• 9 mins

The chemistry of cannabis

How an Israeli scientist discovered the crucial compounds in the widely-used drug

• 9 mins

Fighting for Uyghur rights in China

A first-hand account of taking on the Chinese Communist Party in the 1980s

• 9 mins

Soviet nuclear missile alert

The Soviet colonel who realised that a warning of a US nuclear attack was a false alarm.

• 9 mins

China opens up to capitalism

How China's Communist rulers established the country's Special Economic Zones in May 1980

• 9 mins

Eyjafjallajökull: The volcano that stopped Europe

How the eruption of a little-known Icelandic volcano grounded flights in Europe in 2010

• 9 mins

Egypt's bread riots

How huge unrest forced the Egyptian government to ditch a plan to increase bread prices

• 9 mins

The war in Transnistria

The bloody conflict between Moldova and Russian-back separatists in the early 1990s

• 9 mins

People Power in the Philippines

In 1986, four days of huge public protests brought down President Ferdinand Marcos

• 9 mins

The murder of Kelso Cochrane

How a street killing in 1950s London led to Britain's first race relations inquiry

• 9 mins

The first McDonald's in Moscow

The American fast-food chain was a huge hit when it opened in the Soviet Union in 1990

• 9 mins

Shanghai at War

A first-hand account of living through the Japanese occupation in the 1930s and 40s

• 9 mins

Chasing the Marcos millions

The lawyer who's spent decades tracking the fortune of the former Philippines president

• 9 mins

Meeting Picasso

A British art historian on becoming a friend of the great Spanish artist in the 1950s

• 9 mins