The History Hour

The Falkands War

09 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On the fortieth anniversary of the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands, Max Pearson hears two contrasting accounts of the war with Britain. Pat...

Protesting against Putin

02 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Starting in late 2011, tens of thousands of protestors took to the streets to try to stop what they saw as a power grab by Russian leader Vladimir Put...

Ukrainian history special

26 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

To mark the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a special edition on episodes from Ukrainian history. In April 1986 a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nucle...

Women who made history

12 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

To celebrate International Women's Day, a special edition on five women who've made their mark on history. US feminist Gloria Steinem remembers foundi...

Russia under Putin

05 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, rose to power and transformed Russia. We hear eyewitness accounts of Putin's war in Chechnya, his campaign aga...

LGBT history special

19 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1990s, doctors in Berlin began a cutting-edge treatment programme that led to a patient being cured of HIV/AIDS. The so-called "Berlin patient"...

The Ukraine crisis: an eyewitness history

12 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Former presidents and protestors recount two key moments in the history of the Ukraine crisis - from the historic meeting that ended the USSR to the d...

Kazakhstan's new capital

05 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How Kazakhstan's strongman president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, created a new capital, which would eventually be named after him; transformation in the UE...

Fifty years since Northern Ireland's Bloody Sunday

29 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In one of the most controversial episodes of 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland, UK soldiers fired on unarmed Catholic protesters, killing 13 in Janua...

The rise of Boko Haram

22 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 2009, Boko Haram, a small Islamist group, launched an insurgency in the north eastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri. The conflict would eventually fo...

Hitler's Indian ally: Subhas Chandra Bose

15 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Indian independence campaigner, Subhas Chandra Bose, sided with Hitler's axis powers in World War Two to try to free his country from British rule...

Mozambique's Eduardo Mondlane: From professor to freedom fighter

08 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Mozambique’s struggle to end Portuguese colonial rule and the assassination of Eduardo Mondlane, we'll hear from his daughter Nyeleti Brooke Mondlan...

A history of games

01 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The inside story of games that shaped the modern world. Including Atari's Nolan Bushnell on his game Pong which helped launch the video game industry....

The right to drive in Saudi Arabia

25 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 2011, cybersecurity expert Manal Al-Sharif helped found the Women2Drive movement. It was designed to force the Saudi Arabian government to overturn...

The birth of Bangladesh

18 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

A special edition on the Bangladesh War of Independence, which ended 50 years ago in December 1971. The conflict killed hundreds of thousands of peopl...

Four decades of HIV/Aids

04 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It’s forty years since the first report on HIV/Aids appeared in a medical journal. Back in the early days in the 1980s a misunderstanding made one m...

The assassination of the Mirabal sisters

27 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The three Mirabal sisters were leading figures in the Dominican Republic's opposition movement against the dictator General Rafael Trujillo. They were...

Sudan's October Revolution

20 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How in 1964 Sudanese civilian protesters first brought down a military regime, plus the hunt for former Serbian leader Radovan Karadžić later convic...

The South African football star murdered for being a lesbian

13 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 2008, the brutal murder of Eudy Simelane shocked South Africa and highlighted the widespread violence faced by South African women and members of t...

When Eritrea silenced its critics

06 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

An hour of first hand accounts from the past. Starting with a crackdown on opposition voices in Eritrea from twenty years ago, plus memories of the 19...

The child environmental activist of the 1990s

30 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

To mark the start of the UN Climate Change Conference, or COP26, taking place in Glasgow in the UK, we’re looking back at the history of our awarene...

The Greenham Common women's peace camp

23 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The anti-nuclear weapons protest began in 1981 and lasted nineteen years. Also the first transgender priest in the Church of England, WW2 Polish refu...

The Pakistani law that jailed rape survivors

16 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Under legislation known as the Hudood Ordinances introduced in 1979, a nearly blind teenaged rape survivor was jailed herself for having sex outside m...

Black history: Britain and race

09 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

As part of our British black history coverage we look back at the racism faced by London's first black policeman from his own colleagues. We also hear...

Photographing Brazil's Yanomami

02 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1971 photographer Claudia Andujar began documenting the lives of a remote indigenous tribe in the Brazilian Amazon jungle. Her photographs helped t...

Kenya: Westgate mall attack

25 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Eyewitnesses remember the Westgate mall attack in Kenya, the 1990s 'miracle water' craze in Mexico, and the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. Plus th...

The earthquake that devastated Haiti

18 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 2010 the Haitian capital and surrounding areas were hit by a catastrophic earthquake. Much of Port Au Prince was flattened and more than a hundred ...

9/11 and the war on terror

11 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In a special edition on the terrorist attacks on America, we hear from the White House official who broke the news to the President and a Muslim first...

Surviving the fall of Saigon

04 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

When South Vietnam fell in 1975, most could not escape. In the last days, the US airlifted its remaining personnel and some high ranking Vietnamese of...

My father survived the sinking of the Titanic

28 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Fang Lang was one of six Chinese men who survived the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. The six faced racism and a hostile immigration system when they ...

US withdrawal: The Fall of Saigon

21 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The desperate scramble to evacuate the US embassy at the end of the Vietnam war in 1975, also the 1940s Indian radio station calling for independence....

The Berlin Wall

14 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In August 1961, communist East Germany began building the Berlin Wall, which divided the city for nearly three decades and became a symbol of the Cold...

Chipko: India’s tree-hugging women

07 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The story of the famed 1970s Indian conservation movement. Plus we speak to Professor Vinita Damodaran about the history of Indian environmentalism. A...

Darfur's ethnic war

24 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We hear about the start of the war in Darfur, through the eyes of a teenage boy whose life was changed when the Sudanese military allied to a local mi...

When the Taliban ruled Kabul

17 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Afghans remember life under the Taliban in 1990s Kabul, and we ask Kate Clark of the Afghanistan Analysts Network about the fall and rise of the Talib...

North Korea's 1990s famine

10 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

When the USSR collapsed it could no longer support North Korea, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths due to starvation and malnutrition. We hea...

Supernatural sightings

03 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Is there anybody out there? Max Pearson hears about a UFO sighting in rural Zimbabwe in 1994 and talks to Gideon Lewis-Kraus of the New Yorker about w...

The Confederate flag and America’s battle over race

19 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In June 2015 an American anti-racist activist climbed a flagpole on the South Carolina state house grounds to take down the Confederate flag. The prot...

When Israel destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor

12 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

On 7 June 1981 Israeli fighter jets launched a surprise attack on the Osirak nuclear reactor located outside Baghdad, killing 11 people. The French-bu...

The war on drugs

05 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

US President Richard Nixon declared illegal drugs 'public enemy number one' in 1971 and launched a worldwide 'war' on the narcotics trade. 50 years on...

Amilcar Cabral: an African liberation legend

29 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We remember Amilcar Cabral, who led the armed struggle against Portuguese colonial rule in West Africa in the 1970s and speak to Dr Nayanka Perdigao a...

When Egypt said Enough

22 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Under the slogan 'kefaya' which means 'enough' in Arabic, in 2004 Egyptians began protesting in Cairo against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak. The...

Why a British MP was filmed taking mescaline

15 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

# Warning: This programme contains descriptions of drug use # In 1955 Christopher Mayhew MP took the hallucinogenic drug mescaline for a TV experiment...

The IRA hunger strikes

08 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The IRA hunger strikes of 1981 – Max Pearson hears from Suzanne Breen of the Belfast Telegraph about the impact of the hunger strikes in Northern Ir...

The killing of Osama Bin Laden

01 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It is 10 years since the al-Qaeda leader was killed. We look at the US special forces operation that finally tracked him down to a city in northern Pa...

How the NRA became a US political lobbying giant

24 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The origins of the gun lobby in the US. Plus we speak to Prof Robert Spitzer about the power of the National Rifle Association. Also, the mysterious A...

The first woman in the US Supreme Court

17 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Sandra Day O'Connor was appointed to America's top court in 1981. She'd been nominated by newly-elected Republican president Ronald Reagan. Also in th...

The women who reclaimed the night

10 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We hear from the women who started "Reclaim the Night" marches in the north of England in 1977 - a time when a serial killer nicknamed the Yorkshire R...

Black Jesus

03 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

On Easter Sunday 1967 the Reverend Albert Cleage re-named his church in Detroit the Shrine of the Black Madonna. He preached that if man was made in G...

The History Hour

27 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

South Africa fights for cheaper drugs during the AIDS epidemic, the man born into slavery in Mauritania, trying to end the troubles in Northern Irelan...

The History Hour

20 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The hunt to find the Jamaican drug lord wanted for extradition to the United States, the six men trapped in a simulated space ship for a year and a h...

The women of Egypt's Arab Spring

13 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The women of Egypt's Arab Spring; the underground abortion network in 1960s America; Greece's champion of the Parthenon Marbles, Melina Mercouri; Chi...

The Iron Curtain

06 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Churchill's Iron Curtain speech about the Cold War, the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa which radicalised many anti-apartheid movements and we he...

The fall of Kwame Nkrumah

27 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

An eyewitness account of the overthrow of Ghana's famous independence leader. And we examine Nkrumah's legacy with Prof. Gareth Austin from Cambridge ...

Black History: The Black Panthers

20 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

As part of our Black History coverage we look back at the Black Panthers and ask Professor Clayborne Carson of Stanford University "How radical was th...

US 'smart bombs' hit an Iraqi air raid shelter

13 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

More than 400 civilians were killed when two US precision bombs hit the Amiriya air raid shelter in western Baghdad on the morning of 13 February 1991...

The Burma protests of 1988

06 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In August 1988, people took to the streets of Burma, or Myanmar, to protest against the country's military government. The bloody uprising would lead ...

The Arab Spring of 2011

30 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the early months of 2011 a wave of social unrest swept across the Arab world as people protested against repressive and authoritarian regimes, econ...

Hitler's beer hall putsch

23 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Hitler made his first attempt at seizing power in Germany in 1923, ten years before he eventually became Chancellor. The failed "beer hall putsch" - s...

Attack at the US Capitol

16 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1954, Puerto Rican militants opened fire in the US House of Representatives, wounding five Congressmen - we hear how the assault was one of many pr...

Buddhist on Death Row

09 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How US inmates turned to Buddhism to face execution in 1990s Arkansas, and we look at the history of the death penalty in the US with Prof Vivien Mill...

75 years of Unesco

02 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Unesco - the United Nations Scientific, Cultural and Educational Organisation - was set up 75 years ago, in the aftermath of the Second World War.It’...

Film special

26 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We hear from eye-witnesses to some classic moments in cinema history – from It’s a Wonderful Life to Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy via Studio Ghibl...

The birth of Bangladesh

19 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How Pakistan's first democratic elections in 1970 led to war, the break up of Pakistan and the creation of a new country, Bangladesh. Also Gibraltar u...

The first African to win the Nobel Peace Prize

12 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

When Chief Albert Luthuli won the Nobel Peace Prize he was living under a banning order in rural South Africa. He won the prize for advocating peacefu...

The fall of Addis Ababa

05 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In May 1991, the brutal Ethiopian dictator, Colonel Mengistu and his military regime were on the verge of collapse after years of civil war. The end c...

Disability History special

28 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We look back at the fight for disability rights in the UK and India in the 1990s, plus the remarkable life of Helen Keller as told by her great niece...

The world's first woman premier

21 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sirimavo Bandaranaike was elected prime minster of Sri Lanka, or Ceylon as it was known then, in 1960 following the assassination of her husband, Solo...

The Guerrilla Girls

14 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1985 a group of anonymous female artists in New York began dressing up with gorilla masks on their heads and putting up fly-posters around the city...

The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin

07 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1995, the Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was murdered at a peace rally in Tel Aviv. We hear how his death scuppered hopes of peace in the M...

US presidential history special

31 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Eyewitness accounts of moments in US presidential history: Inside JFK's election victory, remembering Shirley Chisholm - the first African American fr...

Why Portugal decriminalised all drugs

24 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the grips of a drug crisis, why Portugal took a radical approach in 2001 and became the first country in the world to decriminalise all drugs. Also...

CNN and the 24-hour news revolution

17 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In June 1980, US media mogul Ted Turner launched the first TV station dedicated to 24 hour news, Cable News Network or CNN. We get a first-hand accoun...

British black history special

10 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We present five eyewitness accounts of moments in British black history. Including the late Sam King remembering the voyage of the Empire Windrush, pl...

The Mafia and Italian politics

03 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The trial which linked a senior Italian politician to the Mafia, the death of the charismatic Egyptian President - Gamal Abdel Nasser, a whale rescue ...

Blackwater killed my son

26 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

An Iraqi father remembers the day in September 2007 when US private security guards opened fire on civilians in central Baghdad killing 17 people, inc...

Stories of resistance and protest from around the world

19 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Max Pearson brings you a roundup of this week’s Witness History stories of resistance from the last 70 years. From the early days of opposition to ...

Prohibition in India

12 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How Indian women in the 1990s campaigned to stop the sale of alcohol in the state of Andhra Pradesh to protect women from domestic violence and safeg...

Inventing James Bond

05 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How author and former intelligence officer Ian Fleming created the British super-spy, James Bond plus, how the British government shifted social care ...

Margaret Ekpo - Nigeria's feminist pioneer

28 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Margaret Ekpo helped establish Nigerian independence and became one of the country's first female MPs. We hear from her grandson and speak to a Nigeri...

The siege at Ruby Ridge

22 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Randy Weaver was a white separatist in Idaho in the north-west United States who was wanted by the government on firearms charges. When government age...

Beirut's hotel war

15 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

At the start of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, Beirut’s luxury hotel district was turned into a battlefield, with rival groups of gunmen holed up i...

The Second World War in Japan

08 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It’s 75 years this week since the dropping of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which led to Japan’s surrender to Allied forces and the end ...

Adrift for 76 Days

01 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Surviving the Atlantic alone in a liferaft, Spain's historic 1960s tourism boom, the death of the infamous Nazi Heinrich Himmler, plus fighting Austr...

The Million Man March

25 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On 16th October 1995 hundreds of thousands of black American men marched on Washington D.C. in an attempt to put black issues back on the government a...

South Korea's 1980s prison camps

18 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The horrors of South Korea's so-called Social Purification project, the vanished Chinese sailors who left their mark on Liverpool after the Second Wor...

Quarantined in a TB sanatorium

04 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Extreme lockdown half a century ago: the TB children forced to endure years of isolation in a sanatorium; the unveiling of looted Nazi art works, the ...

Dealing with economic crisis

27 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

As the world begins to consider how to emerge from the Coronavirus pandemic, we look back at economic crises of the past and how countries have respon...

Sex trafficking and peacekeepers

20 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How whistle-blowers implicated UN peacekeepers and international police in the forced prostitution and trafficking of Eastern European women into Bosn...

Black American History Special

13 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Eyewitness accounts of important moments in recent African American history. We hear from the daughter of the man named in the court case which became...

The Zanzibar revolution

06 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How a bloody 1960s revolution changed East Africa. We hear an eyewitness account and talk to Professor Emma Hunter of Edinburgh University. Plus the b...

The Gwangju massacre

30 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Forty years on from the Gwangju uprising in South Korea, the book that changed the way we eat, plus the dangers of being a Congolese conservationist. ...

Britain's World War Two crime wave

23 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

During times of crisis in the UK, World War Two is often remembered as a period when the country rallied together to fight a common enemy. But as Simo...

Fighting for the pill in Japan

16 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Why Japanese women had to wait until 1999 to be allowed to take the pill, the Dutch 'Prince of scandal', plus the flatulent fish that prompted a Cold ...

VE Day Special

09 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Eyewitness accounts of the fall of Nazi Germany and the end of the Second World War in Europe. Using unique interviews from the BBC's archives we brin...

The 1957 flu pandemic

02 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A new strain of flu emerged in East Asia in 1957 and spread all over the world. Known at the time as “Asian flu”, it killed more than a million pe...

The last survivor of the transatlantic slave trade

25 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The grandson of the last surviving African-born US slave, plus the story behind the portable hospital breathing ventilator that was a precursor to tho...

Apollo 13: The drama that gripped the world

18 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

50 years since the Apollo 13 mission, how millions of TV viewers followed the famous rescue of the three NASA astronauts. Also, the women who led the ...

How technology revolutionised our lives

11 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In a special edition of the History Hour, Max Pearson looks back at some of the major technological milestones of recent years. We hear about the Cali...

Women in the law

04 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Trailblazing British lawyer Rose Heilbron was the first female judge at London's famous Old Bailey criminal court. Her daughter Hillary Heilbron QC re...