In October 1973 Arab nations slashed oil production in protest at American support for Israel during it's war against Egypt and Syria. Oil prices sky rocketed. Alex Last heard from former deputy secretary general of OPEC, Dr Fadhil Chalabi, about the struggle for the control of oil in the early 1970s.Photo: Cars queuing at a petrol station in L ...…

The Italian authorities tried to divert the stream of molten lava pouring down the slopes of the Etna volcano on the island of Sicily in 1983. Susan Hulme has been speaking to volcanologist, Dr John Murray, who was there watching their efforts to save homes and businesses from destruction.Photo: Mount Etna erupting in 2017. Credit:Reuters/Anton ...…

The murdered Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, is being made a saint of the Roman Catholic church. He was killed in 1980 by a right-wing death squad as he said mass at the altar. His death pushed El Salvador into its bloody civil war. Mike Lanchin spoke to local journalist, Milagro Granados, who was there at the moment of his assassinat ...…

In October 1945, Austria got its first provisional government since its annexation by Nazi Germany a year before the Second World War. Wilfriede Iwaniuk was 14 when Hitler marched into Vienna; she tells Louise Hidalgo about the harshness of the war years and how, after the war too, there was no food and few jobs.Picture: Wilfriede Iwaniuk in 19 ...…

During World War Two the German secret service compiled a book listing all the people they wanted to arrest in Britain if it fell to the Nazis. The top-secret 'Special Search Index GB' contained details of politicians and intellectuals and people who had fled Germany before the war - but it also included relatively ordinary British citizens. Vi ...…

In 1948 racist violence broke out against Romany-speaking traveller people in Sweden. The riots in the town of Jönköping lasted for several days. Birgitta Hellström and Barbro Gustafsson are sisters from the traveller community and they have been speaking to Tim Mansel about the events of that time. (Photo: Birgitta Hellström (L) and Barbro Gus ...…

Britain's Labour government was determined to get rid of the unelected aristocrats sitting in the House of Lords - Parliament's second chamber. But the hereditary peers didn't go without a fight. Susan Hulme has been speaking to Marquis of Salisbury the man at the centre of the backroom deal to keep some seats for the nobility.Photo: Lords at t ...…

Allen Ginsberg first read his poem Howl, at an art gallery in San Francisco in October 1955. It marked a turning point in American literature and is credited with starting the "Beat Generation" of American writers. Michael McClure, a fellow poet, took part in the reading that night. The programme was first broadcast in 2012.Photo: Allen Ginsber ...…

Slava Zaitsev was the first designer to create high fashion collections in the Soviet Union. He tells Dina Newman about the challenges he faced working under communism. Photo: a sketch of a dress designed by Slava Zaitsev; credit: courtesy of Slava Zaitsev.

How a chemist and a surgeon found a way of helping burns to heal. Chemist Ioannis Yannas was working alongside surgeon John Burke when they first made the breakthrough using a membrane made of collagen to cover burns which were too large for skin grafts.Photo: Professor Ioannis Yannas with some of his collagen membrane. Credit: MIT.…

On the 2nd and 3rd of October 1968, students from two neighbouring universities in the centre of São Paulo clashed in a battle which left one dead and many injured. Thomas Pappon talked to two former students who were at the so called 'Battle of Maria Antônia'.Photo: the 'Battle of Maria Antonia', São Paulo, 1968. Credit: Agência Estado/AFP…

The former West Indies cricketer, Learie Constantine, took the Imperial Hotel in London to court in 1943. It had refused to let him and his family stay because they were black. He won his case. Susan Hulme brings you his story from the BBC Archives.Photo: Sir Learie Constantine and his wife in the 1960s. Credit: Central Press/Hulton Archive/Get ...…

In 1993 work began to build Europe's longest road and rail bridge. The Oresund Bridge links Sweden to Denmark connecting them by land for the first time in thousands of years. In an unlikely twist, it also inspired a hit TV drama which has been broadcast in more than 150 countries. Claire Bowes spoke to Ajs Dam, head of information at the conso ...…

The war lasted for eight years. The death toll is estimated at over a million people. It began when Saddam Hussein sent planes and troops into Iran in September 1980. Ahmed Almushatat was a young Iraqi medic who was sent to the front line towards the end of the war. He spoke to Louise Hidalgo.Photo: An Iraqi tank in action. Credit:AFP/Getty Images…

How a scientific breakthrough led to the invention of the revolutionary cancer vaccine. In the 1980s, it was established that cervical cancer was caused by the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) which is usually spread through sexual intercourse. In 1989, scientists Ian Frazer and Jian Zhou at the University of Queensland began working on the basis of ...…

Sometimes called the 'Mother of Modern Dance' she was born and brought up in the USA. Isadora Duncan performed across Europe in the early 20th Century, and her free-flowing movements caused a sensation among dancers and choreographers alike. Simon Watts brings together archive accounts of the dancer whose private life was almost as controversia ...…

South Africa sent 600 soldiers into Lesotho to quell political unrest in September 1998. Mamello Morrison was an opposition protestor. She spoke to David Whitty in 2014 about the ensuing violence. This programme is a rebroadcast. Photo: Members of South African National Defence Force (SANDF) deployed in Lesotho. Credit: Walter Dhladhla/AFP…

In September of 1987, two waste pickers in the Brazilian town of Goiania broke into a disused medical clinic and stole a radiotherapy machine, triggering the biggest ever radioactive accident outside a nuclear facility.Hundreds of people were contaminated and four people died. Thomas Pappon spoke to one of the victims and the physicist who was ...…

Thousands of Allied troops parachuted into the Nazi-occupied Netherlands in September 1944. At that point, it was the most ambitious Allied airborne offensive of World War Two. British, American and Polish troops were dropped behind German lines in an attempt to capture a series of bridges on the Dutch/German border.Mike Lanchin has spoken to H ...…

In September 1966, a film was released that has come to be seen as one of the great political masterpieces of 20th-century cinema. Shot in black-and-white, the Battle of Algiers recreates the turbulent last years of French colonial rule in Algeria. Louise Hidalgo has been talking to former Algerian resistance leader, Saadi Yacef, who plays hims ...…

Five Cuban spies were arrested in Miami by the FBI in September 1998. After a controversial trial, they were given lengthy jail sentences. The last of the five was released in December 2014 as part of a prisoner swap for an American intelligence officer. Mike Lanchin has been speaking to one of the Cubans, Rene Gonzalez, who was released in 201 ...…

The train which marked the end of the steam age on Britain's main-line rail network. The Fifteen Guinea Special was a passenger service which ran from Liverpool to Carlisle on August 11th 1968 to commemorate the withdrawal of steam locomotives from the country's main railways. Steam locomotives had worked on British railways since the early 19t ...…

In 1991 a mystery was solved when two English men claimed responsibility for the creation of crop circles. The huge patterns had been appearing on farmland across England for years and had scientists puzzled, with explanations ranging from whirlwinds to UFOs. Despite this admission of guilt, many people still refused to accept this simple expla ...…

Ricardo Trajano was the only passenger to survive a fire on a plane in 1973. His flight from Brazil was forced to make an emergency landing outside Paris, and 123 people died. But, as he's been telling Thomas Pappon, he stayed alive by ignoring all the official safety advice.Photo: Ricardo Trajano as a young man. Copyright: Ricardo Trajano.…

On September 12th 1977 the anti-Apartheid activist and leader of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa died from injuries sustained while in police custody. The South African police claimed that Steve Biko had gone on hunger strike and had starved himself to death. Farhana Haider has been speaking to Peter Jones, a fellow anti-Aparth ...…

In September 1938 Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew back and forth to Germany to negotiate with Adolf Hitler. He hoped to guarantee "peace for our time". He agreed that Germany could take over the Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia, as part of a policy known as appeasement.Photo: The Prime Minister meets the press on his retu ...…

In 1988 a ship named 'Khian Sea' dumped 4,000 tons of incinerated ash close to the beach in the town of Gonaives, in northern Haiti. The ash had originally come from the city of Philadelphia, and had been aboard the Khian Sea for more than a year, while it searched for a country that would accept it. Mike Lanchin has been speaking to Kenny Brun ...…

First-hand accounts of the Allied offensive which finally brought the war to an end. The offensive took place on the Western Front in the summer and autumn of 1918. After years of trench warfare, Allied forces managed to break through and force the German army into full retreat. In November 1918, Germany was forced to sign an armistice to end t ...…

In 1991 as the communist system was collapsing, in a hugely symbolic act, Leningrad voted to drop Lenin's name abandoning its revolutionary heritage and returning to its historic name of St Petersburg. Dina Newman speaks to Ludmilla Narusova, wife of the first St Petersburg mayor, Anatoli Sobchak, who campaigned for the change. Photo: Communist ...…

In September 1969, a military coup in Libya brought Muammar Gaddafi to power. Louise Hidalgo has been speaking to award-winning writer Hisham Matar about life in Libya in the first decade of Gaddafi's rule, his family’s flight from Libya and how his father, Jaballa Matar, became one of Gaddafi's most prominent opponents in exile and paid the ul ...…

In 1978 the racist murder of a young Bangladeshi textile worker in east London galvanised an immigrant community. Farhana Haider has been speaking to Rafique Ullah who took part in the protests and community action that followed the death of Altab Ali. (Photo: Anti-racist protest in east London 1978. Credit: Altab Ali Foundation)…

The first magnetic resonance scan of a human body was attempted by Dr Raymond Damadian and two students in 1977. It marked a breakthrough in efforts to develop the medical technology now known as the MRI scanner. MRI uses a powerful magnetic field and radio waves to produce images of the inside of the body. Dr Damadian spoke to Ashley Byrne abo ...…

During World War Two the Japanese forced prisoners of war to build a 400 kilometre railway from Thailand to Burma. Tens of thousands died during the construction and it became known as the "death railway". A former British prisoner of war, Cyril Doy, told Claire Bowes how he survived sickness, starvation and humiliation while building the famou ...…

In August 1956, a fire at a coal mine in Belgium killed 262 people. The tragedy caused grief across Europe, but particularly in Italy because more than half the dead were Italian migrants. Simon Watts brings together the memories of Lino Rota, a rescue worker at Marcinelle, and Rosaria di Martino, whose family moved to Marcinelle from a village ...…

On 21 August 1986 villagers in the north-west of Cameroon awoke to find that many of their friends and neighbours had died in their sleep. More than 1,700 people and much of their livestock are thought to have perished as a result of unexpected volcanic activity under Lake Nyos, which produced a cloud of deadly carbon dioxide. Tim Mansel spoke ...…

The League of German Girls was the girl's wing of the Nazi party's youth movement, Hitler Youth. Open to girls aged ten years upwards, it was a key part of the Nazi plans to shape a new generation of Germans. Caroline Wyatt travels to Berlin to meet Eva Sternheim-Peters, now 93, who joined the League at the age of ten and rose to be one of its ...…

The Spanish town of Benidorm is now one of the world's most popular holiday resorts - receiving more than 10 million visitors a year. The hotels and skyscrapers are the vision of Benidorm's mayor in the 1950s and 60s, Pedro Zaragoza. Zaragoza personally convinced Spain's dictator, General Franco, to allow more tourism - and to allow sunbathers ...…

Among the leading Nazi inmates in Berlin’s Spandau prison, which was closed in August 1987, was Hitler's architect and minister of war, Albert Speer. He was the only top Nazi who later apologised for the Holocaust, although he claimed he never knew it was happening. Louise Hidalgo has been speaking to the journalist Roger George Clark, who inte ...…

The story behind the groundbreaking autobiography of a woman who grew up in 19th century pre-colonial Nigeria. The book is the story of Baba a Hausa woman, who lived in the farming hamlet of Karo, when the region was part of the Islamic empire, the Sokoto Caliphate. Baba's account was written down by an English woman, Mary Smith, in 1949, while ...…

Sales of alcohol in the USSR were severely limited in 1985 in a bid to fight drunkenness. But the anti-alcohol campaign was abandoned three years later when the Soviet economy was in trouble, and the government need more taxes. Dina Newman discussed the reasons for the campaign's failure with the former advisor to the Central Committee of the C ...…

A former student, Olda Cerny, tells Alan Johnston about how he made a desperate appeal for the support of the outside world as invading Soviet tanks rumbled through the streets of the Czechoslovak capital in August 1968. This programme was first broadcast in 2010.Picture: Soviet troops in Prague (Getty Images)…

An intriguing story from West Germany in August 1988, of a bank robbery, a three-day car chase that had the country holding its breath, and a journalist who got a little bit too close to the story. Tim Mansel has been hearing from one of the people at the centre of this crisis, journalist Udo Roebel.Photo: Holding a weapon in his hand, kidnappe ...…

In August 1958 the Japanese entrepreneur, Momofuku Ando, came up with the idea of a brand new food product that would change eating habits of people across the world. Ashley Byrne has been speaking to Yukitaka Tsutsui, an executive for the company founded by Ando, about the birth of the Instant Noodle.Photo: 'Space Ram' instant noodles for astr ...…

The apartheid government finally launched a TV service in 1976. For years the Afrikaner dominated government had opposed the introduction of television, believing it would undermine the Afrikaans language, culture and religion. Alex Last has been speaking to two people involved in the launch, presenter Heinrich Marnitz and sound engineer, Dave ...…

In 1969 photo journalist Moneta Sleet became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for journalism. He won for the black and white image of Coretta Scott King the widow of Martin Luther King taken at the funeral of the murdered civil rights leader. Farhana Haider has been speaking to Moneta Sleet's son Gregory Sleet about his father ...…

During WW2 the feminist and writer, Vera Brittain, spoke out against the saturation bombing of German cities. Her stance won her enemies in Britain and the USA. Vincent Dowd has been speaking to her daughter Shirley Williams about the impact of her campaign.Photo: Vera Brittain at Euston Station, London, in 1956. Credit: Central Press/Hulton Ar ...…

In August 1994 Yitzhak Rabin became the first Israeli leader publicly to visit Jordan. But in fact talks had been going on for years. Former head of Mossad, Ephraim Halevy, was Israel's secret peace envoy. He's been telling Louise Hidalgo about Rabin and King Hussein of Jordan's clandestine meetings during the often fraught road to peace.Pictur ...…

At a time of a bitter ethnic conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1988, two villages managed to escape violence by swapping homes with each other. Bairam Allazov, an Azeri, and Ishkhan Tsaturian, an Armenian, told the BBC about how they managed to guide their neighbours and families to safety as war broke out in the Caucasus.Photo:Photo: ...…

In 1954 Guatemala's left-leaning President Jacobo Arbenz was ousted from power by army officers backed by the CIA. In 2016 Mike Lanchin spoke to his son, Juan Jacobo Arbenz, about the events of that time, and the effects on his family.Photo: Jacobo Arbenz and his wife speaking with a group of French reporters in Paris in 1955. Credit: Getty Images…

In 2003 Iran agreed to let officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency into the country to look at its nuclear facilities. Olli Heinonen was one of the inspectors tasked with trying to establish whether or not Iran was trying to develop nuclear weapons. He's been speaking to Tim Mansel about what they found.Photo:The Iranian nuclear p ...…