The rise of Viktor Orban

Viktor Orban, now the populist Hungarian Prime Minister led a democratic movement in 1988

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The first home pregnancy test

A female designer working for a pharmaceutical company came up with the idea in the 1960s

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Drama in the British parliament

Prime Minister Jim Callaghan's desperate attempts to survive a no-confidence vote in 1979

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Around the world in 20 days

The record-breaking balloon flight

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The secret Nazi past of Kurt Waldheim

How former UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim's secret Nazi past was exposed

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Mindfulness for the masses

Scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn pioneered a meditative approach to treat pain and depression.

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Patty Hearst the rebel heiress

In April 1974 the heiress announced she supported her kidnappers' beliefs

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EMDR: the eye-movement therapy

A therapy which seems to work for post-traumatic stress was developed in the late 1980s

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The warship lost for more than 300 years

The discovery of a 17th century Swedish warship, the Vasa, in near perfect condition

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Abolishing the army

Costa Rica dissolved its Armed Forces after a brief civil war in 1948

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou's iconic memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was published in 1969

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The man who made Marilyn Monroe dance

Choreographer Jack Cole had a huge influence on musical theatre and Hollywood films

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The Amritsar Massacre of 1919

In April 1919 British Indian troops opened fire on protestors in the city of Amritsar

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The man who invented wingsuits

The wingsuit is the ultimate in extreme sports clothing, for BASE jumpers and skydivers

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The rise of Hindu nationalism

The consolidation of the BJP as one of the major powers in Indian politics.

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Chinese restaurant syndrome

In the 1960's American diners began to worry that Chinese food was making them ill.

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Dennis Tito - the first space tourist

In April 2001 an American multi-millionaire paid Russia to send him into space

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The first play on Broadway written by a black woman

'A Raisin in the Sun' by Lorraine Hansberry had an almost exclusively black cast too.

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Auto-destructive art

Gustav Metzger and the birth of the radical new art form in the 1960s

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How organic farming started

Worries about the industrialisation of farming post-WW2 led some farmers to go organic.

• 8 mins

The Columbine massacre

13 people were killed and more than 20 injured in the school shooting on April 20th 1999

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Nato bombs Serbian TV

A survivor from the April 1999 bombing in Belgrade that killed 16 people.

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Britain's first vegans

The Vegan Society was established in 1944 by British 'non-dairy vegetarians'

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South Africa's first free elections

After Apartheid all South Africans regardless of race finally won the right to vote.

• 10 mins

Sri Lanka: A journalist's editorial from the grave

The assassination of newspaper editor, Lasantha Wickramatunga, in 2009 shocked the world

• 10 mins

The al-Yamamah arms deals

A record series of arms sales by the UK to Saudi Arabia began in the 1980s

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Ellen comes out

Ellen DeGeneres came out as a lesbian on primetime American television in April 1997.

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Rupert Brooke

The English poet whose death at the start of World War One was mourned by millions

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The Arctic African

Why a boy ran away from West Africa to live in the Arctic in the 1960s.

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The sinking of the Belgrano

The Argentine ship was sunk by a British submarine during the Falklands war

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The Malayan Emergency

The struggle against a Communist insurgency in Malaya in the 1950s

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Jack Ma: The founder of Alibaba

The Chinese billionaire set up his online shopping site in 1999

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The siege of Dien Bien Phu

The French surrender at the siege of Dien Bien Phu ended their colonial rule of Vietnam

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The Bauhaus

The groundbreaking school of art and design was founded in 1919

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The war on drugs

The first 'war on drugs' was launched by US President Richard Nixon in 1971.

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Strictly Come Dancing

One of the most successful TV formats in the world started back in May 2004

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The Karakoram highway

The road between Pakistan and China took 20 years to complete

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Predicting the financial crash

The economists who predicted the 2008 financial crash but whose warnings were ignored

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The final days of Sri Lanka's civil war

How the army finally crushed Tamil Tiger rebels after 25 years of bloody civil war

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China's One Child policy

The Chinese Communist Party started ruthlessly enforcing birth control in the early 1980s

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Hitler's stolen children

During WW2 the Nazis abducted blonde blue-eyed children to build an Aryan master race

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Walking the Great Wall of China

Three friends set off on an epic trek along the Great Wall of China in May 1984

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The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs

The Chicxulub impact crater was discovered in 1978.

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Fighting Uganda's anti-gay laws

When MPs tried to toughen the laws against homosexuality, LGBT activists took a stand.

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How environmental campaign group Greenpeace was formed

The story of how environmental campaign group Greenpeace was formed

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The Acid Survivors Foundation

The Bangladesh charity dedicated to treating the survivors of acid attacks.

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The death of Jawaharlal Nehru

The man who led India to independence died on May 27th 1964

• 9 mins

Bokassa's massacre of the children

How protests by young people led to Jean-Bédel Bokassa's fall from power in C.A.R

• 9 mins

Tiananmen Square escape

Dan Wang was the most wanted student leader after the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.

• 9 mins

Behind the scenes on Sesame Street

The inside story of one of the most popular children's TV shows ever made

• 9 mins

Six Degrees - the first online social network

Andrew Weinreich founded the first online social network in 1997.

• 10 mins

Vikings in York

Archaeologists uncovered perfectly preserved domestic Viking life in York in the 1970s

• 9 mins

D-Day

Eyewitness accounts of the Allied landings in Normandy during WW2 on 6 June 1944.

• 9 mins

The Little Prince

The mystery surrounding the death of the author of the world famous children's tale

• 9 mins

Broadcasting D-Day

How the BBC reported the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France, 6 June 1944

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The Gurkha soldiers fight for equality

A Nepalese regiment of the British army won the right to settle in Britain in 2009.

• 9 mins

The end of the war in Kosovo

Hundreds of thousands of Kosovans fled when NATO began bombing former Yugoslavia in 1999

• 9 mins

The first anti-psychotic drug

How a 1950s drug helped revolutionise the treatment of mental illness

• 9 mins

Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrap the Reichstag

How a huge public art project entranced post-Cold War Berlin

• 9 mins

How America 'lost' China

How an American war hero was sent to stop China becoming communist and failed.

• 9 mins

The first gay marriage in the USA

One gay couple in Minneapolis had a same-sex wedding back in the 1970's

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The death of Neda Soltan

How a young woman became a symbol of anti-government protest in Iran

• 9 mins

Carl Gustav Jung

One of the most influential figures in psychoanalysis died in June 1961

• 9 mins

The assassinaton of Medgar Evers

The American civil rights activist and war hero who was murdered in 1963 in Mississippi.

• 9 mins

Sister Lotus - early Chinese online star

Sister Lotus was an unlikely online celebrity because she was famous for being ordinary.

• 9 mins

The yoga teacher and the violinist

How violinist Yehudi Menuhin and yoga teacher BKS Iyengar helped bring yoga to the West

• 9 mins

The fat acceptance movement

The National Association to Aid Fat Americans, NAAFA, held its first meeting in June 1969

• 9 mins

Catch-22

The story behind Joseph Heller's acclaimed, satirical anti-war novel which sold millions

• 9 mins

The Stonewall Riot

How a protest outside New York's Stonewall Inn inspired the modern gay rights movement.

• 9 mins

The Anfal genocide

Saddam Hussein's war on the Kurds in the 1980s

• 9 mins

Defending a British serial murderer

The lawyer of serial killer Rosemary West recalls the gruesome details of the case

• 9 mins

The US judge accused of sexual harassment

How Supreme Court nominee Judge Clarence Thomas was publicly accused of sexual misconduct

• 9 mins

Germans kidnapped by Nicaragua's rebels

Two German left-wing activists recall their ordeal as hostages of Nicaragua's Contras

• 9 mins

Surviving Cambodia's 'Killing Fields'

The Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, starting their four year genocidal rule.

• 9 mins

The launch of the Walkman

The advent of music on the move in July 1979

• 9 mins

The indigenous fight to stop nuclear waste disposal

How a group of senior, indigenous Australian women fought to save their land.

• 9 mins

The secret diaries of 'Gentleman Jack'

The secret diaries of 19th-century Englishwoman Anne Lister, the 'first modern lesbian'

• 9 mins

China puts tampons on sale

Women in China got access to tampons for the first time in 1985

• 9 mins

The Common Cold Unit

The remarkable UK research centre where thousands went on holiday to catch a cold

• 9 mins

Cuba executes top military officers

Four army officers were sentenced to death for drug trafficking by the Castro government

• 9 mins

Kenya's ivory inferno

How a dramatic bonfire in Nairobi National Park highlighted the threat from poaching

• 9 mins

Laika, the first dog in space

The Russian stray was the first dog to be sent into orbit around the earth

• 9 mins

Valentina Tereshkova, cosmonaut

The Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to be sent into space

• 9 mins

The Moon Landing

In July 1969, Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the Moon.

• 9 mins

Apollo 13

The Moon mission that almost ended in tragedy after an explosion on board the spaceship.

• 10 mins

The Beagle 2 mission to Mars

A failed attempt to search for signs of life on Mars

• 9 mins

Mamma Mia!

The story of the hit musical Mamma Mia! from the woman who created it

• 9 mins

LGBT 'cooperative' marriages in China

How LGBT people in China started arranging fake marriages to hide their sexuality

• 9 mins

The Chappaquiddick Incident

The car accident involving US Senator Edward Kennedy which left a young woman dead

• 9 mins

When Tunisia led on women's rights

When Tunisia introduced divorce, abortion and votes for women ahead of much of the world.

• 9 mins

Humanity's earliest ancestor

A fossilised skull found in Chad is thought to be the earliest-known ancestor of humans

• 9 mins

The death of David Kelly

The weapons inspector's death deepened the row over the UK's part in the invasion of Iraq

• 9 mins

The treasures of Sutton Hoo

A huge hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold was discovered in southern England in 1939.

• 9 mins

The anti-nuclear protesters who won

The eight year protest campaign which stopped a nuclear plant at Wackersdorf in Germany.

• 9 mins

The Warsaw uprising

On August 1st 1944, Polish resistance fighters rose up against German occupying forces

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The invasion of Kuwait

Thousands of Iraqi troops and tanks began pouring into Kuwait on 2 August 1990

• 9 mins

The mass exodus of Algeria's 'Pieds Noirs'

How thousands of French families fled from Algeria as it won independence

• 9 mins

Under the North Pole

In 1958 the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus travelled under the North Pole.

• 9 mins

Criminals in the community

How Britain pioneered Community Service as an alternative to prison in the 1970s

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