Days That Shook the World

1. The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II & The Death of Diana

Air Date: 2003-11-01

2. The Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand / The Death of Hitler

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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.

3. The Assassination of Martin Luther King / The Release of Nelson Mandela

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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.

4. Hiroshima

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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.

5. The Murder of the Romanovs / The Fall of the Berlin Wall

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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.

6. Kristallnacht / The Birth of Israel

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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.

7. Tutankhamun's Tomb / Deciphering the Rosetta Stone

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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.

8. Black September Hijackings / Lockerbie

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9. First Nuclear Reaction / Chernobyl

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2 December 1942 and 26 April 1986. The first controlled nuclear chain reaction heralded the atomic age, but Chernobyl's runaway chain reaction was the first warning. How did the most exciting scientific breakthroughs ever lead to the disaster that the world had dreaded?

10. The Assassination of JFK / The Resignation of Nixon

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11. Marconi's First Transatlantic Radio Transmission / Concorde's First Transatlantic Flight

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12. Faster than Sound: Chuck Yeager / Donald Campbell

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1. The Cost of Betrayal: The Defection of Burgess & MacLean/The Execution of the Rosenbergs

Air Date: 2005-10-20

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.

2. Rule of the Gun: The O.K. Corral/Saint Valentine's Day Massacre

Air Date: 2006-04-22

26 October 1881 and 14 February 1929 From the wild west and the mob-run city come two stories that have entered American mythology: the gunfight in the obscure mining town of Tomestone and Al Copone's frenzied attack on George 'Busgsy' Malone in Chicago.

3. Fact or Fiction: The War of the Worlds/Hitler Diaries

Air Date: 2005-11-03

30 October 1938 and 24 April 1983 Over a million radio listeners panic thinking the nation was being attacked by Martians in Orsen Welles 'War of the Worlds' and one of the world's most venerable newspapers falls for fake diaries of Adolf Hitler. Clever fakers or just a gullible public?

4. The War to End All Wars: The End of World War I

Air Date: 2005-11-10

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.

5. Let Freedom Rise: The Boston Tea Party/The Independence of India

Air Date: 2005-11-17

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.

6. Battle For The Holy City: The Six-Day War

Air Date: 2005-11-24

7 June 1967 By the third day of a six day war, Israeli forces have destroyed egypt's armies in the Sinai, captured the West Bank and seized the Old City of Jurusalem. But the euphoria of victory soon turns to anguish.

7. The Battle of Midway

Air Date: 2005-12-01

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.

8. The Road To Revolution: The Execution of Ceauşescu/The Iranian Revolution

Air Date: 2005-12-22

9. Episode 9

Air Date: 2005-12-15

10. The Overthrow of Ceaucescu

Air Date: 2005-12-22