In May 1976, new unknown Californian wines beat top French wines in a blind wine tasting in Paris. The result shocked the wine world, it transformed the reputation of Californian wine, and horrified the French wine industry. We hear from Steven Spurrier, the man who organised the wine tasting.

Photo: A man smells wine in a wineglass. (Getty Images)

In 1977 a US government body first warned Americans that the food they were eating represented as great a threat to their health as smoking. A Senate Select Committee investigating the links between diet and killer diseases, such as Diabetes and Stroke, reported back that Americans should cut back on red meat, eggs,whole milk and refined sugar. Claire Bowes has been speaking to Nick Mottern whose idea it was to launch a set of 6 dietary goals for the United States.

In 1973, the most successful TV spy series ever to be broadcast in the USSR, went on air. The central character was a Soviet secret agent in Nazi Germany, Max Otto von Stierlitz. Dina Newman speaks to actor Eleonora Shashkova who played Stierlitz's wife. Photo: the script-writer Julian Semenov (l) and actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov, who played Stierlitz (r), on set in Moscow in 1972. Credit: courtesy of Julian Semenov Foundation.

In May 1980 China allowed capitalist activity for the first time since the Communist Revolution, in four designated cities known as the Special Economic Zones. The most successful was Shenzhen, which grew from a mainly rural area specialising in pigs and lychees to one of China's biggest cities.

Lucy Burns speaks to Yong Ya, a musician who has lived in Shenzhen since the 1980s, and to ethnographer Mary Ann O'Donnell.

IMAGE: Pedestrians and cars stream by a giant poster of Chinese patriarch Deng Xiaoping in Shenzhen, the first of China's special economic zones. TOMMY CHENG/AFP/Getty Images

Father and son, Arpad and Giorgio Fischer, were the Italian cosmetic surgeons who spent years developing the modern technique of liposuction, which involves sucking out fat from under the skin. Ashley Byrne has spoken to Giorgio Fischer about how they perfected their invention. Photo: A doctor performs a liposuction at a hospital in Shanghai, China. Credit: AFP /LIU Jin

In May 1976 the German left-wing extremist Ulrike Meinhof killed herself in prison. She and Andreas Baader had led a terror campaign against the West German state in the early 1970s. Journalist Stefan Aust knew her well - he talks to Witness.

Photo:A police photo of German left-wing terrorist Ulrike Meinhof of the Red Army Faction, aka the Baader-Meinhof Group, circa 1972. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In the Spring of 1917, many French army units mutinied after enduring years of slaughter and appalling conditions during World War One. Much of the French army on the Western Front was affected. Hear first-hand accounts of the mutiny from the BBC archive.

In 1992, shortly after the collapse of the USSR, a civil war erupted in Tajikistan, a Central Asian country bordering Afghanistan. Over 30,000 people lost their lives during the five years of fighting. Dina Newman speaks to a villager whose family got caught up in the Islamic opposition. Photo: an opposition supporter holds his self-made weapon as he listens to Islamic leaders in central Dushanbe, on 7th May 1992; credit AFP/Getty Images.

In May 1947, the legendary photographic co-operative Magnum Photos was set up by a group of famous photographers, including Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson whose work would inspire generations of photographers. Members of Magnum would go on to produce many of the most iconic images of the 20th and 21st centuries. Louise Hidalgo talks to Jinx Rodger, widow of one of the founders, George Rodger, and to Inge Bondi, who knew them all.

Photograph: US troops’ first assault on Omaha Beach during the D-Day landings, Normandy, France. June 6, 1944. (Credit: International Center of Photography/Magnum Photos. With thanks to Magnum Photos)

In April 1977 a group of women in Argentina held the first ever public demonstration to demand the release of thousands of opponents of the military regime. It was the start of a long campaign by the women, who became known as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Mike Lanchin has been hearing from ninety-two year-old Mirta Baravalle who has spent decades searching for her missing daughter and son-in-law, and for the grandchild she has never met.

(Photo: Mirta Baravalle, with the black-and-white photograph of her daughter, Ana Maria)