The History Hour

The French minister tried for colluding with the Nazis, the USSR's version of James Bond, the beginning of China's economic boom, plus the first time Americans were told they were too fat - but that their wine was better than France's. PHOTO: Maurice Papon in October 1997, shortly after his trial for war crimes opened. (Credit: Francois Guillot/AFP/Getty Images)

In the 1970s, Italian cosmetic surgeons Arpad and Giorgio Fischer developed the modern technique of liposuction, which involves sucking out fat from under the skin. The global cosmetic surgery industry is now booming and liposuction is one of the most popular procedures. Also in the programme, the little-known civil war in Tajikistan after the breakup of the Soviet Union, how French troops mutinied toward the end of World War One and the start of the legendary Magnum photo agency.Photo: A doctor performs a liposuction at a hospital in Shanghai, China (Credit: AFP /LIU Jin)

In April 1977 a group of women in Argentina held the first ever public demonstration to demand the release of thousands of opponents of the military regime. It was the start of a long campaign by the women, who became known as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Also on the programme: the controversy surrounding Syria's presence in Lebanon, plus the pioneer of psychotherapy RD Laing, Bulgaria's attempts to crush Turkish language and culture, and we hear the shocking testimony of a survivor of Bosnia's notorious rape camps.(Photo: Mirta Baravalle of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, with a black-and-white photograph of her daughter, Ana Maria)

Charlie Chaplin's son on his father's political views and his rocky relationship with his one-time adopted home, America. Plus the Hubble telescope produces the first clear pictures of the furthest galaxies; shaking off colonialism with the world's first festival for black artists; Japan launches a new way of learning the violin and tragedy in Latin America when American missionaries flying over Peru were mistaken for drug-runners.(Photo: Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp in the 1925 film, The Gold Rush. Credit: Getty Images)

NTV was Russia's only nationwide independent TV station until it was taken over in April 2001. We hear from the head of the station at the time. Plus, Ethiopia's Red Terror; the Katyn massacre during WW2; a breakthrough for disability rights in the US with the 504 sit-in; and Sikh bus drivers in the UK win the right to wear turbans to work.Photo: Life size puppets of Russian political leaders including President Putin, on the set of NTV's popular satirical television show "Puppets"; June 29, 2000. Credit: Oleg Nikishin/Newsmakers/Getty

The royal handshake that changed attitudes to AIDS, America enters WW1, plus Egypt's Facebook girl, Nagorno Karabakh and remembering Jane Fonda's workout (Photo: Princess Diana with an AIDS patient at the Middlesex Hospital April 1987. Credit REX/Shutterstock)

In 1994 the world's first genetically-engineered food went on sale in the US. It was a tomato, called the 'Flavr Savr' which stayed fresh for up to 30 days. Plus, a mysterious anthrax outbreak in the Soviet Union; the murder of a Catholic archbishop in El Salvador; and the Teletubbies turn 20.Photo: Roger Salquist, former Chairman and CEO of Calgene (courtesy of Roger Salquist)

100 years since the Russian Revolution, Imperial Russia in colour, AIDS and the mystery of 'Patient Zero', when Indian sex workers marched for employment rights and the British Lord who fled the Nazis in Czechoslovakia as a six year old on the Kindertransport.Photo: 12th March 1917: Barricades across a street in St Petersburg, as a red flag floats above the cannons, during the Russian Revolution. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Women in Kuwait win the right to vote, and the only women on the front line on the Western Front in World War One; battling smog in Mexico City in the 1980s, the artist Georgia O'Keeffe, and America's first incident of Islamic terror forty years ago.Photo: the first women candidates for parliamentary elections in Kuwait in 2006, Aisha al-Rashid (R) and Rola Dashti (C) (Credit: Yasser al-Zayya/AFP/Getty Images)

Life with Mother Teresa among the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, how the World Health Organisation came to realise that obesity was a global problem and Eleanor Roosevelt in the White House. Plus the immortal cells of Henrietta Lacks - a remarkable story of one woman's impact on medical research.(PHOTO: AP Mother Teresa holds a child in 1978)