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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
We did something that no one else had ever done.
There was such an excitement and energy about this moment. It opened the door for everything that rapidly followed. Witness history. History as told by the people who were there. I was walking in space, the first man ever to do so.
I felt almost insignificant, like a tiny ant compared to the immensity of the universe.
Witness history from the BBC World Service. Listen now. Search for Witness History wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Hello and welcome to the History Hour with Max Pearson, this week's BBC World Service Witness History Stories. Coming up, the long journey that finally took Picasso's Guernica to Spain.
We are standing before a tragedy, and if it were possible to capture what it says, it would freeze the blood in our veins. Plus, the invention of the vape, lessons from a famous elderly elephant, and the man behind the rise and rise of new Nordic cuisine.
My ambition was not to build a world-class restaurant. My ambition was to truly impact the everyday cooking culture in Denmark and why not in the Nordics.
That's all coming up later, but before that we've got a good old-fashioned shipwreck story. In 2012, a team of researchers discovered the wreck of one of the most famous polar vessels. The Terra Nova had played a significant part in the history of exploration, most notably as the ship that took Scott of the Antarctic on his doomed early 20th century expedition to the South Pole.
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Chapter 2: What led to the discovery of the Terra Nova shipwreck?
For Leighton, even though mission was complete, it wasn't the end of the Terranova's story. The other thing that we did was lobbying the Greenlandic government for protection of the Terranova. It is a historic wreck and it falls in their water. Initially, that was quite difficult. They weren't sure what legislation existed for protecting the Terranova.
And I think in the end, they made it a kind of museum so that it was protected. So the Terranova is now a protected wreck. The oceanographer Leighton Raleigh was speaking to Megan Jones. Of course, the Terra Nova is just one story from the deep. Around the world, there are many, many more. Dr. Sarah Ward is a maritime archaeologist from the Australian National University.
So, Sarah, do we know how many shipwrecks there are out there still to be found? Thanks, Max. That's an excellent question. We have figures from UNESCO which estimate around three million shipwrecks worldwide. Three million. If so many, does that mean that there's, if you like, a lot of value, treasure lying in the deep? For archaeologists, the information is the treasure.
Chapter 3: How did sound waves help locate the Terra Nova wreck?
We have a huge amount of information that we can learn about the past from that kind of submerged resource. But there will also be... Yeah, there is likely gold, silver, bullion. There are many navies that were carrying treasure, treasure from one place to another. There was a Dutch East Indianman, the Roosvijk in the English Channel, which had silver bars.
And actually the first time that was investigated was an attempt by the Dutch finance ministry to recover that. So you've surveyed shipwrecks all over the place. Do archaeologists like you decide which ones are historically significant on the basis of some sort of a league table? Yes and no. So depending on where we are in the world, it depends on what legislation we're governed by.
And UNESCO, I mention it again because they have this convention for the protection of underwater cultural heritage. And there's a real drive at the moment to have all nations ratify that. And that protects all kind of shipwrecks and all human remains that have been underwater for 100 years or more. But that is really a separate issue from whether something is significant or not.
So it can be old but not significant. Or like the Terranova, it may be younger than 100 years but hugely significant. Okay. And if there are league tables of the best shipwrecks to be investigated, I suppose there must also be, if you like, a league table of the best raised shipwrecks or shipwreck museums to go to, if you can possibly do so.
I've been to Stockholm and been to the Vasa, and I believe you worked on that. It's astonishing. Yeah, as a student. And I was very fortunate to be able to go inside the ship. And it is absolutely spectacular. The Vasa sank in Stockholm Harbour in around, I think, 1628.
It sank on its maiden voyage, which I would say is a little bit embarrassing for the Swedes because this was the king's flagship. It was wildly decorated. It was really a huge investment for Sweden at that time. And it arguably went down because it was carrying too many guns. The king wanted it larger and more well-armed.
You know, it's like when we want an extra scoop of ice cream and we keep demanding more ice cream. He was demanding more guns. This was, for him, the largest, most expensive ship. It gave him... pride of place. Yes, it's a warship. Yes, it's a military vessel. Yes, it's being used for diplomacy and warmongering.
But this is really the status symbol about how the king sees himself and how he sees his kingdom. And it went down, as you say, on the maiden voyage, rested on the bottom of the harbour for many, many decades, but was raised in the 1960s in a quite remarkable operation. Yeah, absolutely. 333 years on the seabed.
And to my knowledge, it's the only ship that's been able to float effectively under its own weight. So the hull was fully intact. The masts are fully intact. What you see in the museum now is all authentic, except for some of the rope has been reconstructed. I think it's the most spectacular ship that we have that's been recovered in terms of
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Chapter 4: What was the significance of Picasso's Guernica painting?
She was found lying down, but she was still alive. And one of my research assistants, Katito, went and stayed with her.
I touch her. And then I touched her. She was going slowly by slowly. The last minute she blinked her eyes like this and looked at me.
And then she died.
It's good. One of us was there.
It was bad. And I was in the US. I immediately went back to Kenya to be with the rest of the team. I was very sad, yeah. It was the end of an era. Echo, the grand old matriarch, had died at the age of 64. For Cynthia, the work continued. I honestly think, and many, many people have said it, much of what we know of elephants has come from this project.
And it affects people studying elephants all over Africa and Asia. Changes have been made in zoos and places like that because of the work we've done to show what elephants need and how elephants live in the natural environment. It's considered the base to go to. And how significant was Echo in this project?
She was significant to give the public knowledge about elephants and how amazing they are and how complex they are and intelligent they are. And the four films we did on Echo certainly did that. We still miss her. Dr Cynthia Moss continues to study the elephants of Ambercelli, a population that now numbers more than 2,000. She was talking to Jane Wilkinson.
Finally, this week's sporting witness, and this is a really odd one. On November 6, 1993, there was a highly anticipated boxing rematch in Las Vegas. A huge crowd, all the usual boxing razzmatazz, and off we go. But then something very strange happened. As Jen Dale now recounts.
Evander Holyfield has regained his WBA and IBF world titles from Riddick Bowe in a bizarre contest, even by Las Vegas standards. The bout in an open-air arena was interrupted by the appearance of a parachutist.
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