The History Hour

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 1980sPhoto: Adamstown, seen in this June 2003 photo of Pitcairn Island (AP)

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)

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)

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

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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

The World War One battle that traumatised France; the Austrian mountaineer who wrote Seven Years in Tibet; how Christian Dior revolutionised fashion with the 'New Look'. Plus, how Foot-and-Mouth disease broke the hearts of British farmers and the botched assassination which humiliated the Israeli Secret Service.(Photo: French Troops under fire at Verdun. Credit: General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

The birth of the Prozac generation, the battle to save Afghanistan's ancient artworks and death and violence in the Spanish embassy in Guatemala. Plus we hear about an American political corruption scandal and the launch of the Disney classic, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

The launch of space shuttle Challenger goes horribly wrong, Rupert Murdoch goes to war with his print unions, Australia's 18th century penal colonies, Sharia law in Nigeria, and Batman comes to TV.Photo: Christa McAuliffe (left) and Barbara Morgan. Credit: Nasa

The 1982 release of the world's best selling album; plus the untimely death of General George S Patton; the former child star Karolyn Grimes on the film It's A Wonderful Life, the Beagle 2 mission to Mars, and Vladimir Nabokov's scandalous book, Lolita.(Photo: Michael Jackson and assorted zombies in the video for Thriller in 1983. Credit: 01/01/1983 Publicity Handout)

The hunt for Bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan; a Ku Klux Klan trial in 1965; the siege of Kut in World War 1; an unexpected alliance in 1980s Britain with Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners; and seminal alternative rock band the Velvet Underground's first gig.(Photo: Afghan fighters look out over a smoking valley after a US B-52 aircraft bombed a front line position in the mountains of Tora Bora in north-eastern Afghanistan. Credit: Associated Press)

Suicide bombings in Amman; a massacre in East Timor that was a turning point on the road to independence; the fall of the Taliban; anti-Sikh riots in India; and the BBC's first wildlife broadcaster

Angie Dickinson remembers her friend, the Hollywood superstar who became the most high profile celebrity to acknowledge he was suffering from Aids; plus one of the founding members of Cuba's Buena Vista Social Club, the Danish cartoon controversy, remembering Kabul's musicians' quarter and the birth of Karaoke. Photo: Rock Hudson at the BBC.

In this programme: Korea split along the 38th parallel, child prisoners of the Japanese during World War Two, the notorious Devil's Island penal colony, the man who published Harry Potter and Sue the T-Rex skeleton.Photo: Korea 38th parallel Credit: AFP