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 first woman in the US S...

04.17.2021

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 the programme: an eye-witness on the beaches during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, the worm ...

The History Hour episodes:

04.17.2021 The first woman in the US Supreme Court 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 the programme: an eye-witness on the beaches during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, the worm ...
04.10.2021 The women who reclaimed the night 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 Ripper was murdering women. The women felt police were policing their behaviour ...
04.03.2021 Black Jesus 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 God's image there was little chance that Jesus was white as most of ...
03.27.2021 The History Hour South Africa fights for cheaper drugs during the AIDS epidemic, the man born into slavery in Mauritania, trying to end the troubles in Northern Ireland, Banksy’s first street art and a sex therapy legend. With Max Pearson
03.20.2021 The History Hour 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 half, the mother of the Swedish welfare state, the New York ...
03.13.2021 The women of Egypt's Arab Spring The women of Egypt's Arab Spring; the underground abortion network in 1960s America; Greece's champion of the Parthenon Marbles, Melina Mercouri; China’s most powerful 19th-century ruler, and the doctor who was India’s 1966 Miss World. Photo: Hend Nafea protesting in ...
03.06.2021 The Iron Curtain Churchill's Iron Curtain speech about the Cold War, the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa which radicalised many anti-apartheid movements and we hear from a man whose relatives were killed when police bombed the home of African-American radicals in the US. ...
02.27.2021 The fall of Kwame Nkrumah An eyewitness account of the overthrow of Ghana's famous independence leader. And we examine Nkrumah's legacy with Prof. Gareth Austin from Cambridge University. Plus the story of a heroic African WW2 airman, the scientists who alerted the world to the ...
02.20.2021 Black History: The Black Panthers 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 the US black rights group?" Also, we bring you an archive interview with Mary Wilson ...
02.13.2021 US 'smart bombs' hit an Iraqi air raid shelter 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 Americans claimed that the building had served as a command and control ...
02.06.2021 The Burma protests of 1988 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 to the rise of Aung San Suu Kyi as the country's pro-democracy leader. Also, the epidemic ...
01.30.2021 The Arab Spring of 2011 In the early months of 2011 a wave of social unrest swept across the Arab world as people protested against repressive and authoritarian regimes, economic stagnation, unemployment and corruption. It began with reaction to the self-immolation of a young market ...
01.23.2021 Hitler's beer hall putsch Hitler made his first attempt at seizing power in Germany in 1923, ten years before he eventually became Chancellor. The failed "beer hall putsch" - so named because it started in a beer hall in the southern city of Munich ...
01.16.2021 Attack at the US Capitol 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 previous attacks on American democracy. Plus, the coup attempt in Spain in 1981, India's ...
01.09.2021 Buddhist on Death Row 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 Miller. Plus, the truth of a space "strike", the 70s book that ...
01.02.2021 75 years of UNESCO UNESCO - the United Nations Scientific, Cultural and Educational Organisation - was set up 75 years ago, in the aftermath of the Second World War. It’s probably best known for its work protecting cultural monuments and areas of natural beauty ...
12.26.2020 Film special 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 Ghibli, the Sound of Music and Charlie Chaplin’s Great Dictator. Plus, film critic Helen O’Hara tells ...
12.19.2020 The birth of Bangladesh 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 under Spanish blockade plus refugees from Namibia’s war of independence, Britain’s first reality TV family ...
12.12.2020 The first African to win the Nobel Peace Prize 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 peaceful opposition to the Apartheid regime. We hear from his daughter Albertina and speak ...
12.05.2020 The fall of Addis Ababa 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 came when a Tigrayan-led rebel movement advanced on the capital Addis Ababa and took ...
11.28.2020 Disability History special 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, how a Rwandan Paralympic volleyball team made history, and the ...
11.21.2020 The world's first woman premier Sirimavo Bandaranaike was elected prime minster of Sri Lanka, or Ceylon as it was known then, in 1960 following the assassination of her husband, Solomon Bandaranaike and became the first female prime minister in the world. We hear from Dr ...
11.14.2020 The Guerrilla Girls 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's museums and galleries. We hear from two of the original Guerrilla Girls, who ...
11.07.2020 The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin 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 Middle East. Plus, the racism endured by children born to black American ...
10.31.2020 US presidential history special Eyewitness accounts of moments in US presidential history: Inside JFK's election victory, remembering Shirley Chisholm - the first African American from a major party to make a presidential run, plus a senator's account of the Watergate hearings, the rise of ...
10.24.2020 Why Portugal decriminalised all drugs 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 searching for those who disappeared during apartheid rule in South Africa, how ...
10.17.2020 CNN and the 24-hour news revolution 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 account of the early days of a channel that transformed news and politics. ...
10.10.2020 British black history special We present five eyewitness accounts of moments in British black history. Including the late Sam King remembering the voyage of the Empire Windrush, plus Britain's first black headteacher Yvonne Conolly, Dr William Lez Henry on confronting the Far Right in ...
10.03.2020 The Mafia and Italian politics The trial which linked a senior Italian politician to the Mafia, the death of the charismatic Egyptian President - Gamal Abdel Nasser, a whale rescue which brought together cold war enemies, the German house which witnessed a century of change ...
09.26.2020 Blackwater killed my son An Iraqi father remembers the day in September 2007 when US private security guards opened fire on civilians in central Baghdad killing 17 people, including his 9-year-old son. Plus, former president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on negotiating the cancellation of Liberia's ...
09.19.2020 Stories of resistance and protest from around the world 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 President Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus, through the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, a photographer's ...
09.12.2020 Prohibition in India 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 safeguard family finances. The history of America's healthcare system, how the UN was eventually ...
09.05.2020 Inventing James Bond How author and former intelligence officer Ian Fleming created the British super-spy, James Bond plus, how the British government shifted social care for the disabled away from large institutions and into the community and the Cape Town bombings in 1990s ...
08.28.2020 Margaret Ekpo - Nigeria's feminist pioneer 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 Nigerian feminist about why Nigeria has so few women in government today. Plus the US Supreme ...
08.22.2020 The siege at Ruby Ridge 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 agents approached his remote cabin on Ruby Ridge in August 1992, it was the start of ...
08.15.2020 Beirut's hotel war 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 in some of the most expensive accommodation in the Middle East. We hear from ...
08.08.2020 The Second World War in Japan 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 of the Second World War. We hear first-hand accounts of military turning points in ...
08.01.2020 Adrift for 76 Days Surviving the Atlantic alone in a liferaft, Spain's historic 1960s tourism boom, the death of the infamous Nazi Heinrich Himmler, plus fighting Australia's bushfires and we remember a groundbreaking Latino writer. Photo: Photo: Steve Callahan shows how he hunted fish ...
07.25.2020 The Million Man March 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 agenda. We hear from one woman who went on the march. Plus the first ...
07.18.2020 South Korea's 1980s prison camps The horrors of South Korea's so-called Social Purification project, the vanished Chinese sailors who left their mark on Liverpool after the Second World War and the return of a huge ancient monument to Ethiopia from Italy. Also fighting for the ...
07.04.2020 Quarantined in a TB sanatorium 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 Rolling Stones in the dock, calls for democracy in 1990s Nepal, and the campaign ...
06.27.2020 Dealing with economic crisis 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 responded to them. Max Pearson hears about America's "New Deal" in the 1930s, South ...
06.20.2020 Sex trafficking and peacekeepers How whistle-blowers implicated UN peacekeepers and international police in the forced prostitution and trafficking of Eastern European women into Bosnia in the late 1990s. Plus, how Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross changed the way we think about death and dying when ...
06.13.2020 Black American History Special 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 a turning point in the battle for civil rights, plus the sister of a teenage ...
06.06.2020 The Zanzibar revolution How a bloody 1960s revolution changed East Africa. We hear an eyewitness account and talk to Professor Emma Hunter of Edinburgh University. Plus the birth of ecotourism in Costa Rica, the post-war origin of the World Health Organisation, the man ...
05.30.2020 The Gwangju massacre 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. Also, revealing accounts of British wartime leader Winston Churchill from his doctor, and the ...
05.23.2020 Britain's World War Two crime wave 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 Simon Watts finds out from the BBC archives, there was a crime ...
05.16.2020 Fighting for the pill in Japan 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 War scare, the first helpline for children and the joy of being ...
05.09.2020 VE Day Special 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 bring you men and women who fought in the battle for Berlin, and some ...
05.02.2020 The 1957 flu pandemic 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 people. We hear from a woman who survived the virus ...

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 first woman in the US Supreme Court

The women who reclaimed the night

Black Jesus

The History Hour

The History Hour

The women of Egypt's Arab Spring

The Iron Curtain

The fall of Kwame Nkrumah

Black History: The Black Panthers

US 'smart bombs' hit an Iraqi air raid shelter

The Burma protests of 1988

The Arab Spring of 2011

Hitler's beer hall putsch

Attack at the US Capitol

Buddhist on Death Row

75 years of UNESCO

Film special

The birth of Bangladesh

The first African to win the Nobel Peace Prize

The fall of Addis Ababa

Disability History special

The world's first woman premier

The Guerrilla Girls

The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin

US presidential history special

Why Portugal decriminalised all drugs

CNN and the 24-hour news revolution

British black history special

The Mafia and Italian politics

Blackwater killed my son

Stories of resistance and protest from around the world

Prohibition in India

Inventing James Bond

Margaret Ekpo - Nigeria's feminist pioneer

The siege at Ruby Ridge

Beirut's hotel war

The Second World War in Japan

Adrift for 76 Days

The Million Man March

South Korea's 1980s prison camps

Quarantined in a TB sanatorium

Dealing with economic crisis

Sex trafficking and peacekeepers

Black American History Special

The Zanzibar revolution

The Gwangju massacre

Britain's World War Two crime wave

Fighting for the pill in Japan

VE Day Special

The 1957 flu pandemic

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