The History Hour

Latest Episodes:

The Pitcairn Sex Abuse Trial Nov 13, 2016

Show notes

A mass child sex abuse trial on a remote island in the Pacific that shocked the world, a controversial Kurdish song, the birth of Rolling Stone magazine, men versus computers, and street fighting in San Salvador in the 1980s

Photo: Adamstown, seen in this June 2003 photo of Pitcairn Island (AP)

Dickey Chapelle - War Reporter Nov 05, 2016

Show notes

On this week's programme, how pioneering American woman war reporter, Dickey Chapelle, was killed in Vietnam; plus two very different perspectives on Mao's China, Mexican writer Octavio Paz and the escape which made Harry Houdini's name.

PHOTO: Dickey Chapelle during a US Marines operation in 1958 (Credit: US Marine Corps / Associated Press)

Shell Shock Oct 29, 2016

Show notes

World War One veterans describe Shell Shock and Prof. Edgar Jones of Kings College on the psychiatric cost of war; plus Hungary's 1956 uprising, how French intelligence was rocked by the abduction of activist Mehdi Ben Barka, the history of Marvel Comics and London's Big Bang. Photo: French troops shelter during bombardment, 1918. (General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

The Mayak Nuclear Disaster Sep 30, 2016

Show notes

One of the world's worst nuclear disasters, the most notorious prison riot in America, Second World War internment in Australia, resistance in apartheid South Africa, and one of Britain's most celebrated artists, Stanley Spencer, through the eyes of his daughters.

Photo: The Mayak nuclear reprocessing plant in 2010. Credit: European Pressphoto Agency

The University of Texas Shooting Aug 08, 2016

Show notes

On 1 August 1966, student Charles Whitman shot dead 14 people and injured another 32 in America's first mass shooting at a university. Plus, the oldest arts festival in the Middle East; how President Reagan smashed the power of the trade unions; and meeting JD Salinger, the reclusive author of "The Catcher in the Rye".

PHOTO: Associated Press.

First CIA coup in Latin America Jul 30, 2016

Show notes

In this week's programme, we hear personal accounts of two fronts in America's Cold War fight against communism: Guatemala and Russia itself. Plus, the earthquake in China that killed a quarter of a million; riots in the English city of Liverpool; and remembering Picasso in his prime.

PHOTO: Army officers opposed to President Arbenz go over a map of the territory on their push to Zacapa and then to Guatemala City, July 1954. (AP Photo)

Tanzania's Ujamaa Jun 04, 2016

Show notes

Socialism in Tanzania, the man who assassinated the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, the crash of the Soviet supersonic jet Concordski, 20 years to build a road and Date Rape

(Photo: Tanzanian women cultivating the soil. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

The Thalidomide Trial May 28, 2016

Show notes

Executives of the German company that made the drug Thalodomide go on trial. Plus, Chechen rebels negotiate peace with President Yeltsin; the Israeli airlift of 14,000 Ethiopian Jews; Hands Across America, the day millions of Americans formed a human chain to try to end poverty; and the execution of the Queen of England, Anne Boleyn.

Photograph: A Thalidomide child undergoes rehabilitation, 1963 (Credit: Keystone/Getty Images)

Remembering Chernobyl Apr 30, 2016

Show notes

Chernobyl, the world's worst nuclear disaster; the funeral of Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution changed the world; plus, the impact of being accused during the McCarthy era in America, and two style icons of the Sixties, the Mini and Yves St Laurent.

Photo: a Swedish farmer wears protective clothing because of contamination from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster (Credit: STF/AFP/Getty Images)

The Original Revolutionary Feminist Mar 12, 2016

Show notes

Russia's revolutionary feminist, British women after the First World War, poisoning in the Balkans, a miscarriage of justice in Britain, and the world's worst aviation disaster

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected