Festival of Light

The Nationwide Festival of Light held by Christians protested against societal changes

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The power of Jomo Kenyatta

Death pardons and chasing diplomats with sticks

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Chiune Sugihara: The Japanese Schindler

In 1940, Chiune Sugihara saved the lives of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis

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Castrating Pablo Escobar's hippos

Pablo Escobar's pet hippos were found roaming Colombian waterways in 2007

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The raising of the Mary Rose

King Henry VIII's warship, The Mary Rose, was raised from the seabed in October 1982

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Dassler brothers’ rift

Brothers Adi and Rudi Dassler would go on to create global firms Adidas and Puma.

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The funk and soul club that changed Manchester

Manchester’s first racially inclusive nightclub

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The release of Gilad Shalit

Israeli solider Gilad Shalit was freed after being held hostage for more than five years

• 9 mins

The fall of Slobodan Milosevic

How the Yugoslavian president was forced from office in October 2000

• 9 mins

The Harder They Come

Jimmy Cliff spoke about the film that brought reggae music to the world in 1972

• 9 mins

The beginnings of Notting Hill Carnival

In 1959, Claudia Jones held a Caribbean party, planting the seeds for the famous carnival

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UK’s ‘Winter of Discontent’

In 1979, British gravediggers went on strike over pay

• 9 mins

Disney animators' strike

In 1941, the animators at Walt Disney's studios went on strike for nine weeks over pay

• 9 mins

Torturing strikers in South Korea

A strike for better work conditions became a divisive moment in South Korea's history

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Geisha mountain top strike

In 1937, geisha from Osaka sat on a mountain for a week until their union was recognised

• 9 mins

Cesar Chavez’s campaign for farm workers

How the leader of a labour movement became a US civil rights hero

• 9 mins

Cuban Missile Crisis: The photos

The CIA expert whose job was to interpret photographs of missiles in Cuba

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Cuban Missile Crisis: The showdown

The final days of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in the Pentagon and the Kremlin

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The ‘army’ that taught Cuba to read and write

In 1961, Fidel Castro launched a campaign aimed to eradicate illiteracy in Cuba.

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Cuba's boxing ban

In 1962, Fidel Castro banned professional boxing in Cuba, causing some amateurs to defect

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Founder of the Cuban National Ballet

In 1959, Cuba’s most famous ballet dancer formed Cuba’s National Ballet Company

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Indonesia’s indigenous people take a stand

The first ever Congress of Indigenous People of the Archipelago of Indonesia in 1999

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The Iranian Revolution and women

We hear what life was like during, and after the Iranian Revolution in 1979

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Theatre siege in Moscow

It is 20 years since Chechen rebels took an entire theatre full of people hostage

• 9 mins

Arrested for wearing trousers in Sudan

In 2002, Amiera Osman Hamed was put on trial after being arrested for wearing trousers

• 9 mins

Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech

Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's career-defining speech in 2012

• 9 mins

The Little Black Book survival guide

In 1985, a guide was written for young black men in the US who were stopped by the police

• 9 mins

Albania’s Stalinist purges

In the 1970s, Albania’s Stalinist leader, Enver Hoxha, launched a series of purges

• 9 mins

Campaigning against sex-selection in India

A first-hand account of the 1980s campaign against the sex-selective abortion of girls

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Dame Carmen Callil: Feminist publisher

Dame Carmen Callil, who died in October this year, founded a feminist publisher in 1972

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Umuganda: Rwanda's community work scheme

In 1975, President Habyarimana introduced Umuganda, compulsory, weekly community work

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Polynesian Panthers

Polynesians in 1970s New Zealand fight back against dawn raids by the police

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First rape crisis centres in the US

Activist Sue Lenaerts helped start up one of the first rape crisis centres in the US

• 9 mins

The assassination of Pim Fortuyn

It has been 20 years since the controversial Dutch politician was murdered

• 9 mins

Māori protests stops South African rugby tour

Māori anti-racism activists disrupt the South African rugby tour of New Zealand in 1981

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The child evacuees of World War Two

The thousands of children moved out of UK cities away from the risk of German bombs

• 9 mins

Formation of the United Arab Emirates

A new country, the United Arab Emirates, was formed in 1971.

• 9 mins

Burj Khalifa: Designing the world’s tallest building

The tallest building in the world opened in 2010

• 9 mins

Inventing robot camel jockeys

In 2003, a Qatari engineer came up with the idea for a robot jockey in camel racing

• 9 mins

First Emirati female teacher

A young woman who became the first female teacher in the United Arab Emirates

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Qatar's first female published author

Kaltham Jaber's anthology of short stories was published in 1978

• 9 mins

The invention of the seat belt

In 1958, Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin invented the three-point safety belt for cars

• 9 mins

First women’s minister in Iran

Iran’s first ever minister for women’s affairs was appointed in 1975

• 9 mins

When Sweden’s roads went right

In 1967, Swedish traffic swapped to driving on the right-hand side of the road

• 9 mins

The corruption and sodomy trials of Anwar Ibrahim

In 1998, Anwar Ibrahim was arrested and then jailed a year later

• 9 mins

How cat's eyes were invented

In 1934, Percy Shaw invented cat's eyes, the reflective studs in the road

• 9 mins

Mombasa terror attacks

Journalist Kelly Hartog describes the moment terrorists targeted Israeli tourists in Kenya

• 9 mins

CrossFit: The fitness phenomenon that changed the industry

In 2000, an American personal trainer invented CrossFit

• 9 mins

The islands Japan and Russia can’t agree on

In 1947, thousands of Japanese people were taken from their island homes by Soviet troops

• 9 mins

The woman who smuggled HIV into Bulgaria in her handbag

Virologist Professor Radka Argirova was the first to test people for HIV in Bulgaria

• 9 mins

Miss World protest

In 1970, feminists stormed the stage at the Miss World pageant in London

• 9 mins

Quebec’s 1995 referendum

In 1995, the people of Quebec voted on whether to become independent from Canada

• 9 mins

Demolishing the Babri Masjid

Hindu extremists demolished a mosque in the Indian city of Ayodhya

• 9 mins

The killing of Jean Charles de Menezes

In 2005, the unarmed Brazilian man was shot dead by police in London

• 9 mins

'The Dismissal' of Gough Whitlam

In 1975, the Prime Minister was sacked in Australia's biggest constitutional crisis

• 9 mins

Creating Teletubbies

The story of the inspiration behind one of the most popular kids TV shows of all time

• 9 mins

Mongolian revolution

In 1990, a peaceful revolution brought democracy to Mongolia

• 9 mins

The Nazi occupation of Jersey

A woman who risked her life to hide a Russian prisoner during World War Two

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Returning to District Six

Zahra Nordien returned to District Six decades after being expelled during apartheid

• 9 mins

Soviet fashionista

Slava Zaitsev was the first designer to design high fashion pieces in the Soviet Union

• 9 mins

Felix Baumgartner's huge leap

In 2012, Felix Baumgartner jumped from space back to earth

• 9 mins

Una Marson and the BBC Caribbean Service

The BBC's first black producer, Una Marson, and the beginnings of the Caribbean Service

• 9 mins

The BBC broadcasting through the Iron Curtain

Transmitting independent broadcasts through the Iron Curtain between 1947 and 1991

• 9 mins

Colombia's 'false positives' killings

When Colombia's military murdered thousands of innocent civilians

• 9 mins

Grozny siege

In December 1994, Russian forces began the siege of Chechnya’s capital Grozny

• 9 mins

Chile mine rescue

In 2010, 33 miners were trapped underground for 69 days in the San José mine in Chile

• 9 mins

Creating ciabatta bread

In 1982, rally driver Arnaldo Cavallari created ciabatta bread in Adria, in Italy

• 9 mins

Inventing Chicken Manchurian

Chef Nelson Wang created Chicken Manchurian in 1975

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Malta's bread strike

In February 1977 the bakers of Malta went on an unprecedented strike

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Inventing instant noodles

In 1958 Japanese entrepreneur, Momofuku Ando, invented instant noodles

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The birth of the Slow Food Movement

In 1986, protests against McDonalds in Rome led to an anti-fast food revolution.

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One team in Tallinn

In 1996, Scotland played in a football match where the opposition hadn't turned up

• 9 mins

Arctic African

Tété-Michel Kpomassie, ran away from his village in Togo and went to live in Greenland.

• 9 mins

When America banned silicone breast implants

In 1992, the US Government suspended all procedures involving silicone breast implants

• 9 mins

The man Pinochet wanted dead

In 1973, Miguel Enriquez led resistance against the dictatorship in Chile

• 9 mins

Pussy Riot’s cathedral protest

In 2012, a punk protest took place in one of Moscow's main cathedrals

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Plastics in oceans

In 1971 Edward Carpenter discovered plastic floating about in the Atlantic Ocean

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Dutch North Sea flood

In 1953, a storm combined with high tides breached sea defences in the Netherlands

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Paul Robeson and the transatlantic phone line

In 1957, Paul Robeson used a new phone line to perform the first transatlantic concert

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Galápagos Islands’ sea cucumber dispute

A demand for sea cucumbers set off a confrontation between fishermen and conservationists

• 9 mins

World’s first tidal power station

French President Charles De Gaulle opened the power station in 1966.

• 9 mins

Miracle on the Hudson

On 15 January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 landed in the Hudson River in New York

• 9 mins

Europe's horse meat scandal

In 2013, horse meat was discovered in beef products across Europe

• 9 mins

Kosovo’s house schools

In the 1990s a generation of Albanians got their education crammed into private homes

• 9 mins

France's nuclear tests in Algeria

Between 1960 and 1966, France carried out 17 nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara

• 9 mins

Swine flu vaccine and narcolepsy

In 2009 a vaccine designed to stop swine flu appeared to trigger a sleep disorder

• 9 mins

When Britain tried to censor the Troubles in Northern Ireland

Paul McLoone recalls the time he was the voice of Martin McGuinness

• 9 mins

Japanese death row guard

Yoshikuni Noguchi was a prison guard in Japan and witnessed the hanging of a prisoner

• 9 mins

Smolensk air disaster

In 2010, a plane carrying the Polish president, crashed and killed everyone on board

• 9 mins

Albert Pierrepoint: Britain's executioner

Using archive recordings, Alex Last tells the story of Britain's most famous hangman

• 9 mins

Invention of the MP3

It took Karlheinz Brandenburg and his team more than a decade to perfect MP3 technology

• 9 mins

Palestine Post bombing

Mordechai Chertoff was the editor on the Palestine Post when it was bombed in 1948

• 9 mins

Czechoslovakia's 'Velvet Divorce'

Two former Prime Ministers describe how they split Czechoslovakia in two in 1993

• 9 mins

Columbia space shuttle disaster

The US space shuttle Columbia broke up on its way back to Earth on 1 February 2003

• 9 mins

The assassination of Burundian President Melchior Ndadaye

In 1993, Burundi’s first democratically elected President was murdered

• 9 mins

The first black music station in Europe

In 1981, Leroy Anderson launched Europe’s first dedicated black music station

• 9 mins

How a Pope is chosen

After the death of Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI

• 9 mins

Reforming the Catholic Church with Vatican II

In 1959, Pope John XXIII announced a council of all the world's bishops and cardinals

• 9 mins

Pope John Paul I’s sudden death

Cardinal Albino Luciani became Pope John Paul I in 1978. He died 33 days later

• 9 mins