Washington, Jefferson, Queen Elizabeth I, social media sensation Zack Septic-Tank and a host of plucky Puritans star in a show marking 400 years since the Mayflower’s famous voyage.
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Julius Caesar is the most famous Roman of them all: brutal conqueror, dictator and victim of a gruesome assassination on the Ides of March 44 BC. 2,000 years on, he still shapes the world. He has given us some political slogans we still use today (Crossing the Rubicon), his name lives on in the month of July, and there is nothing new about Vladmir Putin’s carefully cultivated military image, and no real novelty in Donald Trump’s tweets and slogans.
Mary Beard is on a mission to uncover the real Caesar, and to challenge public perception. She seeks the answers to some big questions. How did he become a one-man ruler of Rome? How did he use spin and PR on his way to the top? Why was he killed? And she asks some equally intriguing little questions. How did he conceal his bald patch? Did he really die, as William Shakespeare put it, with the words Et tu, Brute on his lips? Above all, Mary explores his surprising legacy right up to the present day. Like it or not, Caesar is still present in our everyday lives, our language, and our politics. Many dictators since, not to mention some other less autocratic leaders, have learned the tricks of their trade from Julius Caesar.
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A special episode of the historical sketch show about Winston Churchill, starring Jim Howick. We follow Churchill from a young soldier in India during the time of Queen Victoria, through the First World War, to victory in World War II and finally to his retirement in the Swinging Sixties - what a journey! Meanwhile, across the world, we meet the American soldier literally spreading propaganda around the battlefields, and learn about Gandhi’s more eccentric side. With, of course, our host Rattus to guide the way!
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Dr Chris and Dr Xand turn back the clock and look at what medicine was like in the First World War. They meet a paralympian runner who swaps her awesome blade for a World War I leather leg and they look at the little critters that infested the trenches. Then they set up a massive experiment to demonstrate how soldiers’ bodies had to cope with the pressures exerted by huge explosions
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Professor Iain Stewart uncovers the mysterious history of Australia, and shows how Australia’s journey as a continent has affected everything from Aboriginal history to modern-day mining, and even the evolution of Australia’s bizarre wildlife, like the koala.
Iain begins searching for the platypus - a strange creature that is half mammal and half reptile. 200 million years ago reptile-like mammals were found across much of the world because at this time Australia was just one part of a huge landmass called Gondwana, that dominated the southern hemisphere.
Piecing together evidence from fossils found in a sea cliff outside Sydney and rocks recovered from Captain Scott’s expedition to the South Pole, Professor Stewart shows that Gondwana was covered by a forest of now extinct trees called glossopteris. This was the habitat of the ancestors of today’s platypus.
To discover the fate of Gondwana, Iain visits an unusual mining town called Coober Pedy where many of the buildings are underground in dug-out caves. The opals that are mined here enable him to recreate the breakup of Gondwana, and also show how Australia’s formation led to the creation of a vast underground aquifer. This source of hidden water sustained the Aboriginal people as they criss-crossed the otherwise arid Australian interior.
Iain travels to the cliffs of the Australian Bight to show how Australia was once joined to Antarctica, and how their split led to the evolution of the biggest group of mammals on Earth - the filter feeding whales.
Australia’s journey away from Antarctica has also left its mark on the koala. Its big, round face and fluffy ears are a result of adaptations to the climate change that Australia has undergone on its northwards journey.
Finally Iain travels to Indonesia to meet the Bajau people of the Banda Sea - sea gypsies who glean almost all they need to live from the waters around them. Contained within these waters is evidence that shows Australia’s eventual fate. Over the next 50 million years, Australia will collide with Asia, its isolation will be over, and it will become forested and lush once again.
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Tony Robinson explores the Cotton Mills of the Industrial Revolution and the the working and living conditions of the employees. Students will learn about what powered the factories and the apprentices that kept the machines functioning as well as the emerging reform movement
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Geologist Professor Iain Stewart shows how the continent of Africa was formed from the wreckage of a long-lost supercontinent. He discovers clues in its spectacular landmarks, mineral wealth and iconic wildlife that help piece together the story of Africa’s formation. But he also shows how this deep history has left its mark on the modern-day Africa and the world.
Iain starts at Victoria Falls, with a leap into the water right on the lip of the 100m waterfall. Hidden within this cliff face is evidence that the falls were created by vast volcanic eruptions 180 million years ago, marking the moment when Africa was carved from the long-lost supercontinent of Pangaea and became a separate continent.
The creation of Africa had a surprising impact on evolution. At the pyramids of Giza in Egypt, Iain finds marine creatures that reveal that this part of Africa was once a shallow sea that formed when Africa was created. And within the arid Western Desert, he reveals 17m-long skeletons of early whales revealing how land-dwelling mammals were lured back into the shallow seas created by the birth of the African continent, leading to the evolution of whales.
At the diamond mines of Sierra Leone, the vast gravel pits once fuelled the devastating civil war. These diamonds reveal not just the very earliest origins of the land that makes up Africa today, but how the very first continents came into existence.
On the Serengeti Plains the wildebeest migration is fuelled by a process that will eventually lead to Africa’s destruction. Every year the wildebeest return to give birth in an area of nutrient-rich grass growing on fertile volcanic soil and ash and lava from the nearby volcano reveals that beneath Africa there lies a mantle plume of molten rock. This volcanic upwelling is so strong that scientists predict it will one day tear the ancient continent of Africa in two.
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On its hundredth anniversary, Horrible Histories takes a look at the Russian Revolution. Tsar Nicholas II gives us tips for survival in Russia’s extreme climate (clue: a massive amount of wealth helps), and we reveal that Lenin’s European Communism lecture tour took in a trip to London Zoo. Lenin also gives us beauty advice on how to look good even after death! Meanwhile, Dave TDS finds out just how hard it is to invade Russia, and we listen to Uncle Joe Stalin’s Nursery Rhymes and find out that, at one point, he also decided that the key to world domination might, in fact, lie in poo.
‘The Russian Revolution, a roller-coaster ride of an event that changed the world forever, featuring unpopular emperors, mad monks and wild revolutionaries, and it all happened in a huge country that had been ruled by the same Royal Family, the Romanovs, for 300 years’
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Two hundred million years ago the continent we know as Eurasia - the vast swathe of land that extends from Europe in the west to Asia in the east - didn’t exist.
To reveal Eurasia’s origins, Professor Iain Stewart climbs up to the ‘eternal flames’ of Mount Chimera in southern Turkey, blazing natural gas that seeps out of the rock. Formed on the seafloor, it shows that where the south of Eurasia is today, there was once a 90-million-square-kilometre ocean known as the Tethys. It is the destruction of the Tethys Ocean that holds the key to Eurasia’s formation.
In the backwaters of Kerala in southern India, he finds evidence of how that happened, in the most unlikely of places: the bones of the local fishermen’s catch. The freshwater fish called karimeen shares anatomical features with another group of fish that live in Madagascar, evidence that India and Madagascar were joined. India was once 4,000 kilometres south of its current position on the other side of the Tethys.
As it moved north, the ocean in front of it closed. And as it collided with the rest of Eurasia the impact built the Himalayas, the greatest mountain range on Earth. Professor Stewart reveals how the mountains aren’t simply pieces of the land pushed upwards. In fact the rock that forms them was once the floor of the Tethys Ocean.
As Eurasia assembled, Arabia, Greece and Italy too moved north, completing the continent we know today and creating a mountain chain that spans the continent. And it was in the shadow of these mountains that the continent’s first civilisations rose.
But the formation of Eurasia is just the beginning, because the process that formed it is still active today. On the island of Stromboli, Italy’s most continually active volcano, the spectacular eruptions show that the ocean floor is being pulled beneath Eurasia. It is this process that closed the Tethys, and today is closing the Mediterranean, revealing Eurasia’s future. 250 million years in the future all of the continents will collide together once more, forming a new Pangea, with Eurasia at its heart.
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Professor Iain Stewart uncovers clues hidden within the New York skyline, the anatomy of American alligators and inside Bolivian silver mines, to reconstruct how North and South America were created. We call these two continents the New World, and in a geological sense they are indeed new worlds, torn from the heart of an ancient supercontinent - the Old World of Pangaea.
Iain starts in New York, where the layout of the city’s skyscrapers provide a link to a long-lost world. Deep within their foundations is evidence that 300 million years ago New York was at the heart of a huge mountain range - part of the vast supercontinent called Pangaea.
Trekking into the Grand Canyon, Iain uncovers a layer of sandstone from Pangaean times that shows there was a vast desert either side of the mountains. Footprints in the rocks of the Grand Canyon reveal that there was only one type of animal that could thrive here - a newly evolved group called the reptiles. Iain meets the closest living relative of those early reptiles - the alligator.
Two hundred million years ago, Pangea underwent a transformation. North and South America were carved from Pangaea, and pushed westwards as separate island continents. To see how this westward movement shaped South America’s often bloody human history, Iain travels to Potosi in Bolivia. Cerro Rico is one of the most dangerous mines in human history. Iain goes to the heart of this extinct volcano to reveal the process that has shaped South America - subduction.
Subduction has also created the longest continual mountain range in the world - the Andes. At its heart lies the stunning ethereal landscape of the Salar de Uyuni, a vast salt flat where a lake has been uplifted thousands of metres above sea level. The lithium found here may be a new source of mineral wealth for Bolivia, for use in mobile phones.
The last chapter in the story of the Americas is told through that most typically Andean animal, the llama. But like much of South America’s wildlife it originated in North America, and only came south when the two island continents of North and South America joined three million years ago.
Since that momentous joining the story of the Americas has been a shared one. Together they continue their westward drift away from the Old World. However, on a cultural and economic level you could argue that the opposite is the case. In our new global economy the Americas are at the very heart of our connected world.
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Mexico City World’s Busiest Cities - Worksheet to support the BBC Documentary
This time, Dan Snow, Anita Rani and Ade Adepitan are in Mexico City, uncovering the hidden systems and armies of people that help run this sprawling megalopolis of over 22 million people. It is crowded, it is congested and this haphazard city sits in a major earthquake zone, but the people here have a strength of spirit that allows them to defy everything nature can throw at them.
Anita discovers how they are trying to stop this megacity from drowning in its own waste, while Ade heads to the edge of the sprawl to find out about the daily struggle for clean, affordable drinking water. Dan reveals how you build a skyscraper in an earthquake zone and learns the hard way that Mexican street food can be hot! Mexico City has grown at a staggering pace. How on earth does this epic sprawl survive its many daily battles?
In Mexico City, Dan Snow, Anita Rani and Ade Adepitan uncover the hidden systems and armies of people that help run this sprawling megalopolis of over 22 million people.
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Using state-of-the-art 3D graphics and the timing of a stand-up comedian, world-famous statistician Professor Hans Rosling presents a spectacular portrait of our rapidly changing world. With seven billion people already on our planet, we often look to the future with dread, but Rosling’s message is surprisingly upbeat. Almost unnoticed, we have actually begun to conquer the problems of rapid population growth and extreme poverty.
Across the world, even in countries like Bangladesh, families of just two children are now the norm - meaning that within a few generations, the population explosion will be over. A smaller proportion of people now live in extreme poverty than ever before in human history and the United Nations has set a target of eradicating it altogether within a few decades. In this as-live studio event, Rosling presents a statistical tour-de-force, including his ‘ignorance survey’, which demonstrates how British university graduates would be outperformed by chimpanzees in a test of knowledge about developing countries.
We live in a world of relentless change. Huge migrations of people to new mega cities, filling soaring skyscrapers and vast slums. Ravenous appetites for fuel and food. Unpredictable climate change. And all this in a world where the population is still growing. Should we be worried? Should we be scared? How to make sense of it all?
A four page resource plus expanded graph activity worksheets
*30 MCQ Question Sheet and Answers for editing
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Titanic the New Evidence Investigative journalist and Titanic expert Senan Molony examines recently recovered photographs of the doomed ship, which provide fresh insight into the reasons for its sinking. The images reveal a strange mark on the hull, which may prove previously, overlooked stories of a fire raging in the boiler room.
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The Civil War rages. The minie ball is the great equalizer on the battlefield. The formidable Confederate army cannot match the Union’s mastery of technology; railroads, supply lines and the telegram become new weapons in a modern war.
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Kate Humble joins a team of geologists on an awe-inspiring adventure to Ambrym in the Vanuatu island chain.
Here, she undertakes an arduous journey to Marum - a volcano containing one of only five lava lakes on the planet - abseiling right to its heart to discover if another major eruption might be imminent.
Along the way, she discovers how the volcano has shaped the customs and traditions of the islanders and discovers what it really means to live each day on the slopes of an erupting volcano.
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Kate Humble joins a team of geologists on a journey right to the heart of one of the most active volcanoes in the world.
On the island of Tanna in the Vanuatu archipelago lies Yasur - a volcano that erupts constantly, firing out red-hot lava bombs and showering the island in thick black ash. To discover whether another devastating eruption might happen, the team needs to collect a lava bomb the minute it is hurled from the crater.
As they prepare for their death-defying mission, Kate explores the island and discovers how the volcano shapes the lives, traditions and beliefs of everyone who lives in its shadow.
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Dr Suzannah Lipscomb journeys back to Tudor times, when the newly emergent middle classes had money for luxuries and early consumer goods, many of which contained hidden dangers.
Dr Lipscomb takes us back to Tudor times in search of the household killers of the era.
It was a great age of exploration and science where adventurers returned from the New World with exotic goods previously unknown in Europe. An era in which the newly emergent middle classes had, for the first time, money for luxuries and early consumer goods, many of which contained hidden dangers.
The period also saw a radical evolution in the very idea of ‘home’. For the likes of Tudor merchants, their houses became multi-room structures instead of the single-room habitations that had been the norm (aristocracy excepted). This forced the homebuilders of the day to engineer radical new design solutions and technologies, some of which were lethal.
Suzannah discovers that in Tudor houses the threat of a grisly, unpleasant death was never far away in a world (and a home) still mired in the grime and filth of the medieval period - and she shows how we still live with the legacy of some of these killers today
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A special episode about William the Conqueror, starring Kevin Eldon. We meet young William, Duke of Normandy, as he quarrels with Harold Godwinson about who should be king of England, before bashing the English and taking the crown at the famous Battle of Hastings in 1066! Meanwhile, across the world, we discover Chinese technology light years ahead of the dunderheaded Normans and Saxons in England, and meet one of the world’s first scientists in Egypt. With, of course, our host Rattus to guide the way!
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A special episode about King Henry VIII, starring Rowan Atkinson. We meet the young Henry as he struggles with his boring dad Henry VII, before becoming king himself and going through wives like most people go through toothbrushes!
Meanwhile, across the world, we meet the great Ottoman leader Suleiman the Magnificent in Turkey and the mad, bad and very dangerous-to-know Zhengde Emperor in China. With, of course, our host Rattus to guide the way!
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In the final episode of The Life of Muhammad, presenter Rageh Omaar continues to chart the story of The Prophet Muhammad. Drawing on the expertise and comment from some of the world’s leading academics and commentators on Islam, Omaar analyses and investigates key events during the later part of his life, including the introduction of a moral code known as Sharia and the concept of Jihad. The programme also explores Muhammad’s use of marriage to build alliances, and looks at the key messages included in his final sermon.
In line with Islamic tradition the programme does not depict any images of the face of Muhammad, or feature any dramatic re-constructions of Muhammad’s life.
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