Days That Shook the World Episode Rating Graph

In September 1970 Terrorists hijacked a number of jetliners, flew them to Jordan and kept numerous hostages to enforce their demands. In December 1988 Pan Am flight 103 was blown from the sky killing all aboard and a number of Lockerbie Scotland residents.

19 May 1536 and 10 December 1936 The Story of two English kings whose private affairs become national events - how the Queen of England gambled everything only to end her life on the scaffold and how the King put his love for a divorcee before his duty to the nation.

6 December 1773 and 14 August 1947 The catalyst and repercussions of freedom from colonial rule are explored in the American 'patriots' raid on a British ship and the web of devastation and destruction the soured India's independence celebrations.

14 April 1865 and 19 April 1995 Eye-witness accounts, key figures and court transcripts are used to retell tow terrorist acts which shook America. The killing of the President and the bombing of a federal office over a century apart were both committed by Americans seemingly at war with their own country.

22 August 1962 and 20 July 1944. Two assassination attempts that, if successful, might have changed the course of history: the Algerian Secret Army's attempt to shoot President de Gaulle of France and Colonel von Stauffenberg's planting of a bomb under Hitler's desk.

25 December 1914 The first Christmas of World War 1 bore witness to an incredible phenomenon. A spontaneous truce broke out in the murderous trenches, led by the gun-fodder troops of each side and reluctantly followed by, for once, important officers and generals.

It is 19th October 1977 and Concorde taxis onto the runway at Toulouse Airport. Onboard, the crew are preparing for an historic day - the first supersonic test flight to New York. At JFK airport, protestors are waiting with a hostile welcome, but for the Concorde team and the French and British governments it is a moment that represents the end of an exhausting struggle.

4 June 1942 At a tiny atoll in the Pacific Ocean, the massed forces of the US and Japanese fleets meet for a decisive showdown. In the space pf just four minutes, the entire course of World War II is about to be transformed.

4 April 1968 and February 1990. How two men - both intellectuals and determined opposers of racial oppression - came to symbolise the fight for equality as their lives for their cause.

This episode dramatises the minute by minute events leading up to the world's first ever atomic bombing. Based on extracts from President Truman's personal diaries which show the decision-making process reflecting America's real fear that the Japanese would never give up, Japanese eyewitness accounts of the tragedy in Hiroshima, diaries written on board Enola Gay, and the personal testimony of Colonel Paul Tibbets, the man who led the mission so secret not even his crew knew the enormity of what they were doing.

9 November 1938 and 14 May 1948. Just ten years after the Nazis openly attacked Jews and their property - a huge step on the nightmare spiral to the Holocaust, the 2000 year old dream of a Jewish homeland becomes a reality and the state of Israel is Born.

26 November 1922 and 17 September 1822. Two days that brought ancient Egypt dramatically to life. In 1822, Jean-Francois champollion cracks Egyptian hieroglyphs. One hundred years later, Howard Carter reads the name on a tomb and makes an amazing discovery.

19 June 1953 and 25 May 1951 The differing fates of the most famous Soviet spies are explored as, in the USA, the Rosenbergs face the electric chair for passing atomic secrets to the Soviets and, after a dramatic flight, the British spies Burgess and Maclean find safety in the hands of the KGB.

28 June 1914 and April 1945. The Story Behind two pistol shots: the single bullet, fired by a young Serb nationalist that triggered World War 1 and the self-administered shot that brought about the end of Adolf Hitler and World War 2.

17 July 1918 and 9 November 1989. The Murder of the Russian royal family marked Russia's irrevocable move from a monarchy to a Communist state. Seventy Years later, the fall of the Berlin Wall symbolised the collapse of the ideology.

11 November 1918 This dramatic story of the final days of World War 1 finds soldiers still fighting and Germany turning to anarchy. Meanwhile, in a wood in France, hostile negotiations take place in a race to end the war.