The birth of Bangladesh

How Bangladesh’s struggle for independence began with a landmark election in Pakistan.

• 53 mins

Film special

Featuring It’s A Wonderful Life, Studio Ghibli and Charlie Chaplin

• 53 mins

75 years of Unesco

Why Unesco was set up 75 years ago, in the aftermath of the Second World War.

• 53 mins

Buddhist on Death Row

How US prisoners turned to Buddhism to face execution, and the truth of a space "strike"

• 49 mins

Attack at the US Capitol

Puerto Rican militants attack Congress, India's first woman lawyer, landing on Titan

• 53 mins

Hitler's beer hall putsch

Hitler's first attempt at seizing power, anti-Sikh riots in India, and the Turner Diaries

• 53 mins

The Arab Spring of 2011

Eyewitness accounts of the sweeping social unrest against repressive regimes

• 53 mins

The Burma protests of 1988

The fight for democracy in Burma, US troops on drugs in Vietnam, the Moscow state circus

• 53 mins

US 'smart bombs' hit an Iraqi air raid shelter

Hundreds of civilians killed in a Gulf War airstrike; the newspaper to help the homeless

• 53 mins

Black History: The Black Panthers

How radical was the US black rights group? Plus, Mary Wilson of the Supremes

• 53 mins

The fall of Kwame Nkrumah

The overthrow of Ghana's famous leader, a heroic African WW2 airman, the ban on landmines

• 53 mins

The Iron Curtain

Churchill's Iron Curtain speech, South Africa's Sharpeville massacre and a deep dive.

• 53 mins

The women of Egypt's Arab Spring

Egypt's Arab Spring, abortions in 1960s America, the champion of the Parthenon Marbles

• 53 mins

A Jamaican drug lord, New York’s drag scene and cold war chess in the Soviet Union.

• 53 mins

South Africa fights for cheaper drugs, slavery in Mauritania and a sex therapy legend.

• 53 mins

Black Jesus

The pastor who argued God was black; Mrs Thatcher wows Moscow; orchid-hunters kidnapped

• 53 mins

The women who reclaimed the night

Women's night-time protest, a Mexican female serial killer and the jet stream.

• 53 mins

The first woman in the US Supreme Court

Sandra Day O'Connor appointed to America's top court, plus the Bay of Pigs invasion

• 53 mins

How the NRA became a US political lobbying giant

A history of the gun lobby in the US, the Eichmann trial in 1961, the first space shuttle

• 53 mins

The killing of Osama Bin Laden

The life and death of the al-Qaeda leader, the man behind the 9/11 attacks

• 53 mins

The IRA hunger strikes

Hunger strikes in Northern Ireland, wine fraud, and feminist science fiction

• 53 mins

Why a British MP was filmed taking mescaline

A history of psychedelic experiments, contraception in Ireland, an Iraqi escape story

• 53 mins

When Egypt said Enough

The forerunner of the Arab Spring; fighting repression in South Korea; saving wetlands

• 53 mins

Amilcar Cabral: an African liberation legend

Overcoming Portuguese rule in Africa, the Tulsa race massacre and India's biggest strike.

• 53 mins

The war on drugs

US President Nixon declared illegal drugs 'public enemy number one' in June 1971

• 53 mins

When Israel destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor

The 1981 attack on the Osirak nuclear reactor, plus the fall of Madrid & Gaza elections

• 49 mins

The Confederate flag and America’s battle over race

One African-American woman’s act of defiance after a mass shooting in a black church.

• 49 mins

LGBT special

The Stonewall Riot, China's "Cooperative Marriages" and LGBT activism in Ivory Coast

• 49 mins

Supernatural sightings

UFOs in Zimbabwe, the birth of communist China and a wind power pioneer.

• 49 mins

North Korea's 1990s famine

How hundreds of thousands died of starvation and malnutrition in North Korea

• 49 mins