The failed attempt to overthrow the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachov in August 1991.

Mr Gorbachov was held prisoner in his holiday dacha in the Crimea on the Black Sea while tanks and troops were deployed on the streets of Moscow.

One of Mr Gorbachov's neighbours recalls an abruptly curtailed telephone conversation, and a Moscow journalist remembers filming on the streets of a nervous capital.

The picnic planned as a demonstration for European integration that ended with hundreds of East Germans escaping to the West through the Iron Curtain.

We talk to one of the organisers of the picnic, on the border between Austria and Hungary in 1989, that prefigured the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

During the 1930s the people of the US faced widespread economic hardship.

We hear from two people who remember that time.

Bert Stolier was ten years old when the stock market collapsed in 1929.

It is 60 years since The Goon Show first hit the airwaves.

A surreal comedy, much of it was written and performed by the comedian Spike Milligan.

His producer Charles Chilton remembers him.

On 13 August, 1961 East German soldiers and construction workers began work on the Berlin Wall.

At first many Berliners couldn't believe that they would be permanently cut off from one another.

It was to stay in place for almost 30 years.

Photo: Associated Press

In August 1979 the seaside town of Brighton decided to open a nudist beach.

It was the first place in Britain to agree to allow naked bathing.

At first it was a very divisive idea, which shocked some of the locals.

It is 10 years since the closure of the world's first music-sharing website - Napster.

It had been created by teenager Shawn Fanning.

He talks about its beginnings, and the music industry campaign that finally shut it down.

Photo: Associated Press

How one man endured exile after the British expelled his people from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia to make way for an American military base.

Image: Science Photo Library

He was a Canadian sporting superstar but in 1988 he was sold to an American team.

The negotiations surrounding the sale of the ice-hockey player became known simply as 'The Trade'

When he left Canada even non-sports fans felt the pain.

Photo: Getty Images

In 1972 the dictator Idi Amin announced that all Asians had 90 days to leave Uganda.

Nurdin Dawood, a teacher with a young family, didn't at first believe that Amin was serious.

But soon he was desperately searching for a country to call home.

Photo: Idi Amin - Press Association