The History Hour

By BBC World Service

History

What's The History Hour about?

An hour of historical reporting told by the people who were there.

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The Computers for Schools r...

01.11.2020

In 2009, Uruguay became the first country in the world to give a laptop computer to every child in state primary schools. We hear from the man whose initiative is credited with transforming the lives of students and teachers. Plus, ...

The History Hour episodes:

01.11.2020 The Computers for Schools revolution In 2009, Uruguay became the first country in the world to give a laptop computer to every child in state primary schools. We hear from the man whose initiative is credited with transforming the lives of students and teachers. Plus, ...
01.04.2020 The book that warned of an end to civilisation In 1972 a book which outlined the possible future of the world became a best-seller. 'The Limits to Growth' was based on computer modelling which suggested that if economic growth remained unfettered, there'd be a 'traumatic' decline in civilisation from ...
12.28.2019 The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan On 24th December 1979 Soviet troops poured into Afghanistan in support of an anti-government coup. The Soviet occupation would last for nine years. Plus, the hidden history of the board game Monopoly, the invention of chemotherapy, the heaviest aerial bombardment ...
12.21.2019 The Romanian revolution In this edition the fall of the Ceaușescus in Romania in December 1989, a global panic over bees in the early 2000s and WW2 black GIs finally recognised decades after the war. Plus the building of Abuja as Nigeria's capital ...
12.07.2019 The Cuban writer who defied Castro On 7 December 1990 the dissident Cuban novelist and poet Reinaldo Arenas killed himself in New York after years of suffering from AIDS. Before fleeing Cuba, Arenas had been jailed for his homosexuality, sent to re-education camps and prevented from ...
11.30.2019 The man who gave his voice to Stephen Hawking The story of the American scientist Dennis Klatt who pioneered synthesised speech. He used recordings of himself to make the sounds that gave physicist Stephen Hawking a voice. Plus India:struggling to live through economic shock treatment in the 1990s, also ...
11.23.2019 I saw the soldiers who killed El Salvador's priests The woman who risked her life to reveal that the army, not left-wing rebels, were responsible for the murder of six Jesuit priests in 1980s El Salvador; the moment when the Taser first hit the streets; the long legal fight ...
11.16.2019 Rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean In 2004, a German aid agency ship, Cap Anamur, was sailing to the Suez Canal, when it came across 37 Africans on a sinking rubber boat. The captain, Stefan Schmidt, rescued the men and headed for a port in Sicily ...
11.09.2019 Britain's secret propaganda war Subversive warfare and 'fake news' in World War Two, the scandal which exposed horrific Indian police violence in the 1980s, two sides of the Iran hostages crisis in 1979, the woman who transformed cancer treatment, and a defining Berlin Wall ...
11.02.2019 'Jane' - the underground abortion service The feminist network that performed illegal abortions in the 1960s in Chicago, the Algerian nationals who fought alongside the French in Algeria’s war of independence and when Margaret Thatcher first expressed anti- Europe sentiment. Plus the Paris hotel that hosted ...
10.26.2019 The fall of the Berlin Wall 1989 was a seismic year in world history and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the clearest symbol of the Cold War. But it was a series of events across Europe that added to the momentum. We journey ...
10.19.2019 An environmental history special A pioneer of climate change science, UK's Windscale nuclear accident, Kenya's Green Belt heroine who won the Nobel Peace Prize, the man "who fed the world", and banning cars in Mexico City. (Photo: Thick black smoke blowing out of an ...
10.12.2019 Black British history To mark Black History Month in the UK we look back at some landmark moments in British Black History. We hear how the famous cricketer Learie Constantine broke the colour bar, and about the Notting Hill race riots and the ...
10.05.2019 The birth of the People's Republic of China To mark 70 years of communist China we hear from a soldier at the founding ceremony on October 1st 1949. Also, the memories of an American friend and comrade of Mao Zedong, a Red Guard who regrets the cultural revolution ...
09.28.2019 Fighting the Islamic State group online When the Islamic State group took over Mosul in Iraq in 2014 they flooded the internet with propaganda, claiming life under IS was fantastic. One historian living in the city decided to post a counter-narrative online, setting up a website ...
09.21.2019 The Cambridge spy network The distinguished British art historian Anthony Blunt was exposed as a former Soviet spy in 1979. He was one of a group of double agents recruited at Cambridge University who passed vital information to Moscow. The BBC's Gordon Corera explains ...
09.14.2019 Conflict timber in Liberia's civil war How the timber industry fuelled a brutal civil war in West Africa, the Honduran coup that left the president holed up in an embassy plus the Indian affirmative action controversy, the first ever voyage all the way around the globe ...
08.31.2019 The Kindertransport children Around 10,000 children were sent by their parents to safety in the UK out of Nazi-dominated Europe in the run-up to the outbreak of WW2 in 1939. Many of the so-called Kindertransport children never saw their parents again. We hear ...
08.24.2019 The return of the wolf Why the wolf was brought back to the US in the 1990s and the history of "rewilding", plus the liberation of Paris 75 years on, the missing children from El Salvador's civil war, the life and death of Brazil's legendary ...
08.17.2019 The division of Kashmir The origins of the crisis in Kashmir, the warnings ignored about 9/11 and the arrest of the notorious terror suspect Carlos the Jackal. Plus the invention in a British back garden of the daily disposable contact lens and how Dr ...
08.10.2019 The mass exodus of Algeria's 'Pieds Noirs' The French colonialists who returned to France after decades in Algeria, the Catholic welcome when the British army was first deployed to Northern Ireland, plus the US nuclear submarine that went under the north pole, Britain's last battle in China ...
08.03.2019 The anti-nuclear protesters who won The eight year protest campaign which stopped the construction of a nuclear reprocessing plant at Wackersdorf in Germany, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and from more than a decade later, the death of British weapons expert David Kelly, ...
07.27.2019 When Tunisia led on women's rights Liberation for Tunisia's women in the 1950s; gay and lesbian fake marriages in China; the Chappaquiddick incident in the US; the birth of Mamma Mia! the musical, and the discovery of the fossilised remains of humanity's oldest ancestor. Photo: courtesy ...
07.20.2019 Exploring space To mark the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing in July 1969, five personal accounts of landmarks in space exploration. We hear from an Apollo flight controller about the moment Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, and from one ...
07.13.2019 Kenya's ivory inferno Twelve tonnes of ivory was set alight by President Daniel Arap Moi in Nairobi National Park in July 1989, to highlight the threat from poaching. The ivory burn was organised by conservationists who wanted to save the world's elephants. Plus, ...
07.06.2019 Surviving Cambodia's 'Killing Fields' Life under the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, the Germans kidnapped by the Contras in Nicaragua in the 80s, plus how Aboriginal women took on the Australian government against nuclear waste, Anita Hill's stand against the promotion of Judge Clarence ...
06.29.2019 The Stonewall riot The riot that inspired the modern gay rights movement; Saddam Hussein's 1980s genocidal campaign against Iraq's Kurds; notorious British serial killers, Fred and Rose West; 50 years of fighting for fat people in America; and Joseph Heller on his seminal ...
06.22.2019 The assassination of Medgar Evers An African-American civil rights hero, a Chinese online star, the tragic icon of Iran's reform movement and archive recordings of the psychoanalyst CG Jung. Plus the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin's love of yoga. Photo:Roy Wilkins and Medgar Evers Being Arrested ...
06.14.2019 The first anti-psychotic drug How a 1950s drug helped revolutionise the treatment of mental illness. Also, how hundreds of thousands of Kosovans fled when NATO bombed former Yugoslavia. Plus, a monumental public artwork in post-Cold War Berlin, Chinese-American relations after WW2, and a trailblazing ...
06.08.2019 D-Day Eyewitness accounts of the Allied invasion of Nazi occupied Europe on D-day, 6th June 1944. We also hear how the BBC reported events on that momentous day. Plus Vikings in England, the Gurkhas fight for justice and discovering the fate ...
06.01.2019 Tiananmen Square A student protester's perspective on the Tiananmen Square massacre, the first social network on the internet, the surprisingly controversial early years of Sesame Street, the overthrow of Emperor Bokassa in the CAR, and the death of India's first prime minister, ...
05.25.2019 Fighting Uganda's anti-gay laws In 2009 Ugandan MPs tried to introduce new laws against homosexuality that would include life imprisonment and even the death penalty. We speak to Victor Mukasa about his story of fighting for LGBT rights in Uganda, first as a lesbian ...
05.18.2019 The final days of Sri Lanka's civil war In May 2009 the Sri Lankan army defeated the Tamil Tigers, ending a brutal 25-year civil war; also, the economists who predicted the 2008 global economic crash, plus the Nazis' stolen children, a victim of China's One Child policy, and ...
05.13.2019 The war on drugs US President Richard Nixon's efforts to deal with illegal drugs in 1971, the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam plus the rise of Jack Ma and his Alibaba empire in China. Also the Bauhaus movement and the global ...
05.04.2019 The Malayan Emergency Battling a communist insurgency in 1950s Malaya, the sinking of the Belgrano during the UK Argentine conflict, plus how Ellen DeGeneres came out to millions on US TV, also the African who made the Arctic his home because of his ...
04.27.2019 The al Yamamah arms deals The huge but controversial Anglo-Saudi deal, the Sri Lankan journalist who predicted his own murder, plus remembering South Africa's historic election 25 years ago, the day NATO bombed Serbian TV, and the origin of modern Veganism. Photo: Prime Minister Margaret ...
04.18.2019 The Columbine school shooting The memories of the brother of one of the victims of the Columbine mass school shooting; plus the story behind 'A Raisin in the Sun' - the first play on Broadway by a black woman; the world's first space tourist, ...
04.13.2019 The rise of Hindu nationalism How an Indian religious rally in 1990 sparked the rise of Hindu nationalism, 100 years since the Amritsar Massacre plus the first wing-suit for base jumping, a US food scare in the 1960s and teaching Marilyn Monroe to dance. (Photo ...
04.06.2019 Abolishing the army After a brief civil war in March-April 1948, the new president of Costa Rica, Jose Figueres, took the audacious step of dissolving the Armed Forces. The Central American country is now one of just over 20 countries without a standing ...
03.30.2019 Drama in the British parliament Prime Minister Jim Callaghan's desperate attempts to survive a no-confidence motion in 1979, the record-breaking 20-day balloon flight around the world; plus the Nazi past of Kurt Waldheim, mindfulness and the first home pregnancy test. Picture: James Callaghan outside 10 ...
03.23.2019 Autism and the MMR vaccine How a British doctor misled the world by linking the MMR vaccine to autism; the early rise of Hungary’s Viktor Orban also what it was like to contest the Soviet Union’s first multi-party elections plus the exposure in the 1970s ...
03.16.2019 China's breakthrough malaria cure How an ancient Chinese remedy provided a 1970s breakthrough in the fight against malaria; the bombing of Dresden in the Second World War that inspired Kurt Vonnegut's anti-war novel Slaughterhouse Five; the fall of Singapore; plus the town that America ...
03.09.2019 I was abused by a President How allegations of child abuse engulfed Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, the campaign to return the Elgin marbles to Greece, Britain's first black headteacher, the origins of the Barbie doll and how Baroness Warsi made history. Photo: Zoilamerica Narváez announces in ...
03.02.2019 Venezuela's oil bonanza When Venezuela was rich; surviving a mid-air airline disaster; Japan's Red Army militants of the 1970s, the origin of the swine flu epidemic and Iceland's Beer Day. Photo: Seidel/United Archives/UIG via Getty Images
02.23.2019 The curse of Agent Orange Millions left dead or deformed because of chemicals used in the Vietnam war, UK cigarette smoking warnings ignored, remains of the Nazi 'Angel of Death' discovered in Brazil, the Columbia Shuttle disaster which led to huge questions about American space ...
02.16.2019 Iceland jails its bankers Why Iceland jailed 40 bankers after the 2008 financial crisis, how the Maastricht Treaty gave birth to the EU, plus America's first female airline pilots, Cameroon's historic referendum and homeless, drunk and yet a genius in the USSR. (Photo: Protesters ...
02.09.2019 The last days of Hitler Hitler's secretary on the last days in the bunker; a CIA operative on the killing of Che Guevara, remembering the US invasion of Iraq, a child of the Soweto Uprising and the tricky task of bringing Disneyland to France. Photo: ...
02.02.2019 The Iranian Revolution In February 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile to Iran in the defining moment of a revolution that would change his country and the whole Middle East. In a special edition of the programme, Rebecca Kesby hears eye-witness accounts from ...
01.26.2019 Vatican II: Reforming the Catholic Church In January 1959 Pope John XXIII announced a council of all the world's Catholic bishops and cardinals in Rome. It led to sweeping reforms. Plus Carmen Callil recalls setting up Virago, the most successful feminist publishing house to date; India ...
01.19.2019 Strikers in Saris How South Asian women led thousands of UK workers in an industrial dispute in the late 1970s, plus Dr Crippen's alleged gruesome crime, Judy Garland's emotional last performances, the 'miracle waters' in Mexico and excitement over a whale in London's ...

Older episodes

The History Hour

What's The History Hour about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The History Hour episodes:

The Computers for Schools revolution

The book that warned of an end to civilisation

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

The Romanian revolution

The Cuban writer who defied Castro

The man who gave his voice to Stephen Hawking

I saw the soldiers who killed El Salvador's priests

Rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean

Britain's secret propaganda war

'Jane' - the underground abortion service

The fall of the Berlin Wall

An environmental history special

Black British history

The birth of the People's Republic of China

Fighting the Islamic State group online

The Cambridge spy network

Conflict timber in Liberia's civil war

The Kindertransport children

The return of the wolf

The division of Kashmir

The mass exodus of Algeria's 'Pieds Noirs'

The anti-nuclear protesters who won

When Tunisia led on women's rights

Exploring space

Kenya's ivory inferno

Surviving Cambodia's 'Killing Fields'

The Stonewall riot

The assassination of Medgar Evers

The first anti-psychotic drug

D-Day

Tiananmen Square

Fighting Uganda's anti-gay laws

The final days of Sri Lanka's civil war

The war on drugs

The Malayan Emergency

The al Yamamah arms deals

The Columbine school shooting

The rise of Hindu nationalism

Abolishing the army

Drama in the British parliament

Autism and the MMR vaccine

China's breakthrough malaria cure

I was abused by a President

Venezuela's oil bonanza

The curse of Agent Orange

Iceland jails its bankers

The last days of Hitler

The Iranian Revolution

Vatican II: Reforming the Catholic Church

Strikers in Saris

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