麻豆约拍

How the dodo died out

A flightless bird, the dodo was extinct just decades after being discovered by Europeans

• 9 mins

Silent Spring: A book that changed the world

Silent Spring examined the effect of pesticides on the environment

• 9 mins

The discovery of whalesong

In the 1960s whales were being hunted to extinction.

• 9 mins

The frozen zoo

Since 1975, San Diego Zoo has been deep-freezing cell samples from rare species

• 9 mins

The Way Ahead group: Modernising the Royal Family

The Way Ahead group was set up in the 1990s to make Britain鈥檚 monarchy more relevant

• 9 mins

Reforming India's rape laws

The overhaul of India's rape laws followed the fatal gang rape of a student in Delhi.

• 9 mins

The ancient oak tree that taught the world a lesson

A tree in Kew Gardens survived the storm of 1987 and revolutionised gardening.

• 9 mins

The first self-made female millionaire

Madam C. J. Walker was born to former slaves and created a black beauty business.

• 9 mins

The Treaty of Rome

The document which formed the basis for what is now the European Union was signed in 1957

• 9 mins

London's first black policeman

Norwell Roberts endured years of racist abuse within the Metropolitan police

• 9 mins

Cixi: China's most powerful woman

The Empress Dowager Cixi ruled for 47 years until her death in 1908.

• 9 mins

Witnessing the birth of a new language

In the 1980s deaf children in Nicaragua invented a completely new sign language

• 9 mins

The Native American casino boom in the US

How a small Californian tribe won the right for Indian communities to host gambling.

• 9 mins

The release of Nelson Mandela

The day that South Africa's anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela was freed

• 9 mins

Chairman Mao's Little Red Book

The collected thoughts of China's communist leader that became an unexpected best-seller

• 9 mins

The man who first published Harry Potter

The man who spotted the potential of the boy wizard books in 1996

• 9 mins

Diary of life in a favela

A shocking account of the realities of the slums of S茫o Paulo

• 9 mins

The best-seller Fear of Flying

Erica Jong's best-selling book about sex, creativity and love, published in 1973

• 9 mins

The Rules: A dating handbook

The best-selling dating handbook was published on Valentine's Day 1995

• 9 mins

The Pale Blue Dot

How the Voyager space probe captured a famous image of Earth as it left the Solar System.

• 9 mins

How meditation changes your brain

In 2002, a landmark study on Buddhist monks showed that meditation can alter the brain.

• 9 mins

Fighting oil pollution with art in Nigeria

"Battle Bus" was a sculpture in memory of Nigerian environmentalist Ken Saro Wiwa

• 9 mins

Saddam Hussein's 'Supergun'

Building the largest gun in the world for Saddam Hussein's Iraq

• 9 mins

Saving Antarctica

A 1980s campaign to preserve Antarctica for science.

• 9 mins

An Antarctic mystery

Human remains were found on a remote island in Antarctica in 1985 but whose were they?

• 9 mins

The first mobile phone call

The American inventor who made the first mobile phone and the first mobile phone call

• 9 mins

The rebel nuns who left their convent behind

A group of Californian nuns left their convent and set up their own community in 1970

• 9 mins

The last smallpox outbreak

Thousands of people died in the world's last major smallpox epidemic in India in 1974.

• 9 mins

Freeing American prisoners from Iran

The diplomacy behind the release of three US citizens who unknowingly hiked into Iran.

• 9 mins

Womenomics in Japan

Japan faces a demographic time-bomb. Could the answer be Womenomics?

• 9 mins