The History Hour

Max Pearson introduces first-hand accounts of the 2013 chemical weapons attack in Syria and the opening of a refugee camp for Syrians fleeing the civil war. Plus, how lynching was finally outlawed in America, the opening of the Sydney Opera House and the Queen's coronation.PHOTO: A UN inspector at work in Ghouta, Syria in August 2013 (Reuters)

Max Pearson introduces the memories of people who knew Picasso, Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keeffe; plus, how a collector in the Soviet Union managed to open a museum for Russian artists banned by Stalin, and how a festival in Senegal in the 1960s inspired artists across a newly-independent Africa.PHOTO: Pablo Picasso in 1955 (Getty Images)

Max Pearson introduces first-hand accounts of the rule of Ferdinand Marcos Senior in the 1970s and 80s; plus, Shanghai during World War Two, and the opening of the first McDonald's in the Soviet Union. The History Hour also hears how the murder of a young West Indian called Kelso Cochrane changed race relations in Britain in the late 1950s.PHOTO: Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos in Manila in 1977 (Getty Images)

With speculation mounting that President Putin might mount an attack on Moldova, Max Pearson hears a first-hand account of the war in the 1990s between the Moldovans and Russian-backed separatists in the disputed region of Transnistria. There's also a chilling story from the Cold War about how a Soviet air defence official prevented a potential catastrophe by realising that a computer warning about a US nuclear attack was a false alarm.In the second-half of the History Hour, an Egyptian poet remembers how 48 hours of unrest in 1977 forced the government to scrap a huge increase in the cost of bread, and an Icelandic geophysicist recalls how the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano caused disruption all over Europe. PHOTO: Russian-speaking Transnistrian fighters during the war (Getty Images)

Max Pearson gets a first-hand account of how the minority Uyghur community in China staged some of the first protests against the all-powerful Communist Party in the 1980s. Plus, the young lawyer who won the landmark Roe v Wade abortion rights case in the US, the chemistry of cannabis and the personal stories of two veterans of the 1982 Falklands War.PHOTO: A Uyghur yurt on the Xinjiang steppe (Getty Images)

Sixty years after Algeria's independence from France, first-hand accounts of a traumatic 'birth of a nation': a female Algerian bomber who was part of the battle for Algiers; how the French military responded with brutal tactics; a massacre on the streets of Paris; and reprisals against Algerians who fought alongside the French. Plus,the flowering of a national spirit through football.(Photo: French soldiers in the kasbah of Algiers, 1960. Credit: Getty Images)

On the fortieth anniversary of the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands, Max Pearson hears two contrasting accounts of the war with Britain. Patrick Watts was the manager of the radio station on the Falklands; he kept broadcasting calmly as Argentine troops burst into the studio. Patrick Savage was a conscript in the Argentine army; for him, the fighting was a cold, frightening and brutal experience that culminated in defeat. Max also gets analysis of the conflict from Argentine political scientist, Dr Celia Szusterman.In the second half of the programme, there are first-hand accounts of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979; the US-USSR trade deal that fuelled inflation in the 70s; and a historic handshake in space between an American astronaut and a Soviet cosmonaut.PHOTO: Argentine troops on the Falklands shortly after the 1982 invasion (Getty Images)

Starting in late 2011, tens of thousands of protestors took to the streets to try to stop what they saw as a power grab by Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The movement was not successful, but analysts say it worried the Russian leader so much that he launched a crackdown on dissent that has lasted to this day. We hear from Russian rock journalist, Artemy Troitsky, who composed a song that became an anthem of what was sometimes called the "Snow Revolution".Also, the launch of the first women's newspaper in Afghanistan, how black stuntmen demanded work from the big studios in Hollywood, and the dramatic story of the women who escaped a violent cult based in South London.Photo: An anti-Putin rally in Moscow in December 2011. Credit: Getty Images

To mark the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a special edition on episodes from Ukrainian history. In April 1986 a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Soviet Ukraine. Sergii Mirnyi monitored radiation levels in the exclusion zone around the plant. How the international community - including both Russia and the USA - offered security "assurances" to Ukraine in return for giving up its share of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. A survivor's account of Ukraine's great famine in the 1930s, the Holodomor, when several million people died. The mass killing of Ukrainian Jews by Nazi Germany during World War Two, and how Artek, on the shores of the Black Sea in Crimea, became the Soviet Union's most popular holiday camp. Photo: The Chernobyl plant shortly after the explosion in 1986 Credit: Getty Images

To celebrate International Women's Day, a special edition on five women who've made their mark on history. US feminist Gloria Steinem remembers founding Ms Magazine in 1972; Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi discusses the human rights campaigning which won her the Nobel Peace Prize; and a friend of Anna Akhmatova remembers the great Russian poet. Plus, a leading Italian feminist on the international movement in the 1970s which demanded women get paid for housework; and the Australian women who helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War.Picture: Gloria Steinem, centre, at the offices of Ms Magazine in New York circa 1974 (Credit: PL Gould/IMAGES/Getty Images)