The History Hour cover image

The History Hour

Hindenburg disaster and wingsuits

Jan 6, 2024
52:19

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Barbara Waibel, author of a book on the Hindenburg and Director of Archives at the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen, Germany. She tells us about the history of airships.

We begin with some remarkable archive of the Hindenburg airship disaster in 1937. Then British scientist Jonathan Shanklin describes how he discovered the hole in the ozone layer in 1985.

In the second half of the programme we hear from a NASA scientist who worked on the Voyager space probe which took the famous 'Pale Blue Dot' photo of Earth. A physicist from Quebec remembers when a solar flare plunged the Canadian province into darkness. And we hear the exciting and dangerous story of the invention of the wingsuit.

Contributors: Barbara Waibel - Author and Director of Archives at the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen, Germany. Jonathan Shanklin - Scientist who discovered the hole in the ozone layer. Candice Hansen - NASA scientist. Aja Hruska - Physicist from Quebec. Jari Kuosma - Inventor of the commercial wingsuit.

(Photo: Hindenburg airship. Credit: Corbis via Getty Images)

Get the Snipd
podcast app

Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
App store bannerPlay store banner

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Save any
moment

Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways

Share
& Export

Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode