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The war on drugs

President Richard Nixon was the first US President to try to wipe out illegal drug use

• 9 mins

The killing of Pablo Escobar

The Colombian drug lord was shot dead by police in December 1993

• 9 mins

When Peru mistook missionaries for drug traffickers

The Peruvian Air Force shot down a light plane carrying American missionaries in 2001

• 9 mins

Afghanistan's poppy problem

Laila Haidari set up Kabul's first independent drug rehab centre in 2010

• 9 mins

How Switzerland defeated its heroin epidemic

In the 1990s, the Swiss tried radical new policy ideas, including heroin on prescription

• 9 mins

When Israel destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor

Israeli warplanes launched a surprise attack on the Osirak nuclear reactor in June 1981

• 9 mins

Tunisia’s legal brothels

For decades, Tunisia has had a system of legal brothels.

• 9 mins

Benjamin Britten's War Requiem

The emotional first performance at the newly-built Coventry Cathedral in 1962

• 9 mins

The elections that Hamas won

Palestinians voted to elect a new government in 2006. The outcome surprised everyone.

• 9 mins

The Fall of Madrid

How the Spanish capital fell to General Franco's forces in 1939, ending a civil war

• 9 mins

The Confederate flag and America’s battle over race

Why an activist removed the Confederate flag from South Carolina's state house grounds

• 9 mins

Mindfulness for the masses

Scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn pioneered a meditative approach to treat pain and depression.

• 9 mins

The police rape interview that shocked Britain

The documentary that changed the way British police treated women reporting rape.

• 9 mins

The Trabant

The iconic East German car that dominated the roads of communist Central Europe

• 9 mins

China's 'Economic Miracle'

Massive economic growth has been possible because of migrant labour, but at what cost?

• 9 mins

The Stonewall Inn

How a protest outside New York's Stonewall Inn inspired the modern gay rights movement.

• 9 mins

Woubis, yossis and travestis: LGBT activism in Côte d’Ivoire

In 1992, a group of LGBT Ivoirians stormed the office of a national newspaper

• 9 mins

The secret diaries of 'Gentleman Jack'

How the sexually explicit journals of a 19th-century English lesbian came to light

• 9 mins

China's LGBT 'cooperative marriages'

Thousands of gay men and lesbians in China hold fake marriages to avoid family pressure

• 9 mins

The repeal of 'Don't ask, don't tell'

For decades LGBT people in the US military had to keep their sexuality secret

• 9 mins

Zimbabwe's mass UFO sightings

Around 60 children said they saw 'aliens' near their school playground in September 1994

• 9 mins

The Syrian playwright who challenged the regime

A play staged in Damascus undermined official propaganda after the 1967 Six Day War

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The world's first offshore wind farm

The world's first offshore wind farm was built off the coast of Denmark in 1991

• 9 mins

The Chinese Communist Party

A small group of revolutionaries founded the Chinese Communist Party in July 1921

• 9 mins

China's trailblazing foreign students

We hear from one of the first students to study overseas after the Cultural Revolution

• 9 mins

Cuba's blindness epidemic

Up to 50,000 Cubans were inexplicably struck down with sight loss in the early 1990s

• 9 mins

Britain's wartime gold

When Britain went to war with Germany in 1939 it had to find somewhere to keep its wealth

• 9 mins

The famine in North Korea

After the fall of the Soviet Union communist North Korea suffered a famine in the 1990s

• 9 mins

The first World Romani Congress

Roma people from all around Europe met up in England in 1971

• 9 mins

The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior

In July 1985 the Greenpeace boat was bombed in New Zealand by French secret agents

• 9 mins