The 1982 release of the world's best selling album; plus the untimely death of General George S Patton; the former child star Karolyn Grimes on the film It's A Wonderful Life, the Beagle 2 mission to Mars, and Vladimir Nabokov's scandalous book, Lolita.

(Photo: Michael Jackson and assorted zombies in the video for Thriller in 1983. Credit: 01/01/1983 Publicity Handout)

The hunt for Bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan; a Ku Klux Klan trial in 1965; the siege of Kut in World War 1; an unexpected alliance in 1980s Britain with Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners; and seminal alternative rock band the Velvet Underground's first gig.

(Photo: Afghan fighters look out over a smoking valley after a US B-52 aircraft bombed a front line position in the mountains of Tora Bora in north-eastern Afghanistan. Credit: Associated Press)

Suicide bombings in Amman; a massacre in East Timor that was a turning point on the road to independence; the fall of the Taliban; anti-Sikh riots in India; and the BBC's first wildlife broadcaster

Angie Dickinson remembers her friend, the Hollywood superstar who became the most high profile celebrity to acknowledge he was suffering from Aids; plus one of the founding members of Cuba's Buena Vista Social Club, the Danish cartoon controversy, remembering Kabul's musicians' quarter and the birth of Karaoke.

Photo: Rock Hudson at the BBC.

In this programme: Korea split along the 38th parallel, child prisoners of the Japanese during World War Two, the notorious Devil's Island penal colony, the man who published Harry Potter and Sue the T-Rex skeleton.

Photo: Korea 38th parallel Credit: AFP