In February 1944, nearly half a million Chechen and Ingush people were deported from the North Caucasus on the orders of Josef Stalin. They were herded into cattle trucks and sent thousands of miles across the Soviet Union to live in Kazakhstan - tens of thousands died on the way. Witness speaks to a survivor of the deportations, and a member of Stalin's secret police.

(Photo: The monument to Chechnya's victims of Stalin's 1944 deportations stands in disarray in Grozny, 2008. Credit: Hasan Kaziyev/AFP/Getty Images)

In February 1952 thousands of people marched in Dhaka in defence of the Bengali language. Eight of the protesters were shot dead by police. It became known as Bangladesh's Language Movement Day. We hear from Abdul Gaffar Choudhury, one of the demonstrators, whose song about the protests became the anthem of the movement.

(Photo: Student demonstrators gather by Dhaka University, February 1952. Courtesy of Prof Rafiqul Islam and Liberation War Museum).

In February 1991 protesters in Tirana pulled down the giant statue of Albania's former dictator. It was the end of the last communist regime in Europe. Edith Harxhi was among the anti-government protesters.

(Photo: Protesters hold up anti-Communist placards. Credit: D. Deymov/AFP/Getty Images)

Deng Xiaoping's translator, Victor Gao shares his memories of the man who engineered China's economic reform and died on 19 February, 1997.

(Photo: Deng Xiaoping. Credit: AP)

In February 1941, a ship carrying nearly 30,000 cases of whisky was wrecked off the Scottish island of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides. The islanders began to salvage the bottles from the wreck - and the incident later became the inspiration for the film "Whisky Galore".

Photo: An assortment of bottled whisky is displayed at Glenkinchie distillery March 13, 2008 in Edinburgh, Scotland.

In the early 1980s a young black graffiti artist took the New York art world by storm. Soon, his paintings were selling for huge sums but he would die before the decade was out. Hear from Patti Astor who knew him in his heyday.

Photo: Jean-Michel Basquiat painting titled "Dustheads" sold at Christies in NY for over $48 million in 2013 (AP/Christie"s)

*This programme contains distressing accounts of graphic violence.*

In the 1980s left-wing Sandinistas in Nicaragua were under attack from US-backed Contra rebels.

We hear a unique personal account from one former member of the Sandinista special forces, an elite unit involved in the brutal fight for control of the Central American country.

(Photo: AFP/GettyImages)

On 13 February 1974 the Russian dissident writer was sent into exile in the West. His most famous book, the Gulag Archipelago, had charted the abuses in the prison camps of Siberia.

Listen to the memories of Solzhenitsyn's widow, Natalia.

(Photo: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on his arrival in Germany on 13 February 1974. Credit: Getty Images)

In February 1979, the Islamic Revolution changed Iranian women's lives forever. Their freedom was severely limited - including being forced to wear the Islamic veil by the "hijab police". Witness speaks to one woman about her memories of that time.

Photo: Associated Press.

In early 2004, the White House began to realise that Saddam Hussein may not have had WMDs. The existence of chemical and biological agents in Iraq had been a key justification for the invasion in 2003. Hear from the man in charge of the search for the weapons, Iraq Survey Group head Dr David Kay.

(Photo: Former US President George W. Bush. Credit: AP)