Original subtitles

The 20th century

was a time of incredible change.

Unspeakable horrors,

and amazing leaps of scientific discovery.

It was a century marked by events

that united, and divided us.

From great feats to great wars,

with advancements,

and set backs,

that showed us the power of many,

the power of one.

I have a dream.

A century of revolutions,

evolutions,

and retributions.

A century made by conflicts and crimes,

inventions and entertainment,

politics, protests,

discoveries and disasters.

Oh the humanity!

We will count down

the 101 events of the 20th century.

Their stories form the tapestry of our history,

and shape the world in which we live.

The tension lay not in the fear of Castro coming,

the tension lay in what human costs

would have to be paid for him to finally get there.

What was initially a small-scale event,

secluded, and shut out from prying eyes,

turned into a global media exhibition of police brutality.

The transistor in many ways

is one of those really pivotal inventions,

an invention which became an innovation.

At the end of the Second World War,

Europe lay devastated,

but a new threat loomed for allied countries,

one posed by their old ally, the Soviet Union.

A threat that would need an unprecedented response.

As the power of the Soviet Union rose,

the western countries decided

they needed to build their own new power block,

one that would hold Soviet expansion,

prevent the rise of nationalist sentiment,

and encourage a stable European continent.

The common enemy of the Soviet Union

helped empower those seeking more

liberal, internationalist,

global role for the United States so,

in that context that NATO's gotta be seen

for providing collective security

for what would become the foundation stone

of the western alliance,

but then you could say the global, capitalist order

under the stewardship of the United States.

On the 4th of April, 1949,

12 states from both sides of the ocean

formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,

NATO, in Washington, DC.

The new allies agreed to defend each other

against armed aggression.

Our peoples do not want war,

and do not glorify war,

but they will not shrink from it,

if aggression is threatened.

Article Five is key,

and essentially what it says,

is that signatories to the North Atlantic Treaty

committed themselves to viewing an attack

on one member state,

as an attack on all member states.

So essentially, in a kind of a broad,

universalistic way, what it does,

is tie the political and military fate

of the members of NATO together,

and in so doing, firmly entrenches US power

on the European side of the Atlantic.

NATO states agreed to a command structure,

with military headquarters near Versailles in France.

US General Dwight Eisenhower,

named first Supreme Commander of NATO in 1950,

embarked on a tour of the allied capitals,

to convince them of the need to increase their defenses.

His contribution towards saving the peace,

will be acclaimed as being

not less praiseworthy

as in the contribution he made

towards winning the war.

With benefit of aid,

and the security umbrella,

political stability was established in western Europe,

and economies started to grow.

The Soviet Union reacted to the formation of NATO,

and particularly to West Germany's membership,

by forming the Warsaw Pact in May, 1955.

Tensions across Europe

as the two power blocks faced each other,

has become known as the Cold War.

But both sides recognize the destructive power of the other,

and there were no direct military engagements.

Relations began to thaw after the fall

of the Berlin Wall in 1989,

first with the signing of the non-aggression pact

between NATO and the Warsaw Pact,

and then through a partnership for peace.

If I was to say what is the one big legacy of NATO,

I think it's the entrenchment of US power

on a global scale.

It kept communist and socialist influence at bay

in western Europe,

and overall it contributed

to the United States' position as the global hegemon.

Despite the achievements

of the civil rights movement in America,

racism remained the terrible underbelly of their society.

Los Angeles in the 1980's was a crucible

of racial tensions and violence against African-Americans.

Tensions that could easily boil over.

(siren blaring)

On March 3rd, 1991,

Rodney King was pulled over by the police.

Rodney King was on parole at that point.

He'd had a drink,

and he was driving home,

and apparently had been spotted by a helicopter speeding.

He then realized that he was being observed,

then looked in his rear view mirror,

realized maybe he was in trouble here,

put his foot on the accelerator and sped away.

King eventually stopped at Lakeview Terrace.

He was beaten by several officers

in view of the apartments,

where a resident was filming their actions.

In a scene caught on amateur video,

sparks an outcry in the United States.

What they didn't know at the time

was that an amateur cameraman had what was then

quite a new piece of technology, a video camera,

and so what was initially

a small-scale event, secluded,

and shut out from prying eyes,

turned into a global media exhibition of police brutality.

Four men were indicted,

three of whom walked free

on the afternoon of April the 29th.

Completely in fear for my life,

scared to death that if this guy got back up,

he was gonna take my gun away from me,

or there was gonna be a shooting.

No one quite expected

three of them to get off scot free,

and of course there was national outrage,

as a result of what was considered white justice.

This event was one of the catalysts

for several days of rioting.

Hundreds protested at the courthouse,

then brought violence to the streets,

pulling people out of their cars

and beating them with tire irons,

bricks, fire extinguishers,

and their fists.

People started damaging property,

and then damaging cars,

and eventually of course it got terrifically violent,

as the police decided enough is enough.

This is no longer legitimate protest,

this is public disorder,

and that's when the spark really started flying,

and America was ablaze for several days.

A state of emergency was declared.

A combination of 10,000 National Guard and federal troops

were brought in to bring order back to the city.

During the riots, Los Angeles suffered

one billion dollars' worth of damage,

and more than 50 people were killed.

Many of their murders remain unsolved.

The chaotic reaction to King's beating,

and the initial court response,

had a lasting effect on the judicial system.

If they're convicted,

the officers face up to eight years in jail.

If they're acquitted, there'll be an outcry.

Either way, the legacy of their actions that night

is a lasting fear and mistrust of the law in LA.

Under a new scrutiny,

claims of brutality were investigated

under the Law Enforcement Act of 1994.

One of the most important things

that the Rodney King incident,

and the following riots proved,

was that America could not ignore the race problem,

and assume it would go away.

There's a widespread assumption

that the end of the century would really effectively mean

that there would be a post-racial society,

and a colorblind society was not far away.

Rodney King absolutely,

not just reminded people but proved to them,

that it was a long, long way away.

In the 1930's, airships were celebrated

as the future of luxury travel,

until one terrible, and very public disaster,

would see them disappear from the skies.

It burst into flames. (muffled)

There's fire at its flank.

This crash is terrible.

The Germans were building

a huge passenger airship,

to be captain by Hugo von Eckener.

Accommodations are provided for 50 passengers.

In 1937, the Hindenburg set off

on its first transatlantic round trip.

The passengers were accommodated in style,

traveling between Europe and the USA,

at a cruising speed of 125 kilometers an hour,

twice as fast an ocean liner.

The ill-fated flight was a mixture of bad luck,

and poor planning.

The luxury airliner was designed

to have helium filling its massive volume,

but the United States, the only source of the gas,

restricted helium sales to Germany,

fearing its use for military purposes.

As an alternative,

the airship was filled with highly flammable hydrogen.

As a precaution, a stewardess was posted

at the door of the smoking lounge,

to guard the ship against flames

leaving the pressurized room.

Tragedy struck at the end of the journey.

The weather was terrible,

and the ship was 12 hours late.

The landing crew was forced to attempt a high landing,

tying the vessel to its mooring with rope.

Struggling against the storm,

the crew pushed the throttle.

Static electricity sparks, with hydrogen

from a leak in one of the tanks,

lighting the ship from the middle to the back end

in approximately 34 seconds.

The covering burned off the metal skeleton,

which crashed to the ground.

It's a terrific crash

ladies and gentlemen.

The smoke and the flames now,

and the frame is crashing to the ground,

not quite to the mooring mast.

Oh the humanity, and all the passengers (muffled).

Some of the ground crew

survived the rolling heat,

because they were drenched by the rain.

They reported that as the ran from the burning airship,

they could feel the hairs on the back of their necks singe.

The Hindenburg was the greatest

of the Zeppelin class airships.

And the tragedy hurried the demise of Zeppelin travel.

There had been other airship crashes.

However, Hindenburg was the first major

transport disaster caught on film.

Airships have continued in use,

as blimps that serve as camera platforms,

for military and scientific purposes.

But their potential as a form of transport,

was destroyed that day, at Lakehurst, New Jersey.

1950's Cuba was under the control

of American-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista.

His was a corrupt and oppressive regime.

The people were ready for revolution.

Revolution was reached.

Anyone suspected of supporting the Batista regime.

Fidel Castro, a young lawyer in his 20's,

had tried to enter politics in 1952,

but had been blocked by Batista's power grab,

and the brutal repression that followed.

Batista embezzled money,

rigged elections,

and in many ways made Castro's revolution inevitable.

In 1956, with few rifles,

and a loosely bonded network of rebel groups,

the revolution repelled Batista's soldiers,

whilst carrying out hit and run attacks in Havana.

The Castro rebels

plant bombs on buses, on railroad trains.

They set fire to cars and trucks,

oil plants and factories.

I was in Havana, I was going to a nuns school.

I had for the last two years

prior to the revolution,

maybe once every couple of weeks,

I would be called to the principal's office

and asked to go home,

because there had been some kind of ambush,

or major terrorist situation in Havana.

So it was very tense.

The tension lay not in the fear of Castro coming,

the tension lay in what human costs would have to be paid

for him to finally get there.

Batista concentrated his forces

against the insurrection.

But Castro's men were skilled at ambushing small groups

of the rural guard patrol.

As the momentum of the revolution grew,

even the nuns in my school,

were praying for the moment that the barburos,

the bearded ones, come down from the mountains.

After years of fighting,

Castro's revolution had mustered its strength.

It began to capture small towns,

making its way towards the capital.

He took control of Havana, early in 1959.

The level of support for Fidel Castro in Cuba

when they came, was unbelievable,

unbelievable.

Time and again

he was held up by the crowds.

He spoke to them of the new regime

now being inaugurated,

a regime by the way now formally recognized by Britain.

Once in power, Castro's focus

was on improving the lives of ordinary people.

One of the major impacts of Fidel Castro

to the Cuban population,

is that from maybe 60-65% literacy range.

He brought it to about 96% within three years,

the same with the healthcare system,

it's a universal healthcare system,

is one of the models of the world.

Putting members of the old regime on trial,

was also part of the revolution,

and hundreds were executed.

When the government started seizing property,

Castro's communist principles

behind the revolution became clear.

The US grew suspicious of the communist slant

of Castro's ideals,

and responded by cutting off trade,

and orchestrating several attempts to assassinate him,

including spiking his cigars with Botox.

Soon after he rose and turns to the USSR,

when he realizes, just the rhetoric alone

isn't gonna get me anywhere,

I need to do something to protect Cuba

and the revolution in the long term.

Castro's legacy in Cuba,

can be defined by two extreme outcomes.

Power had been seized from a corrupt regime,

and much-needed improvements were made

to the lives of ordinary Cubans.

But Castro also mismanaged the economy,

and restricted political freedom,

subjecting the people again to rule

by the whim of a dictator.

The fight against Castro must go on,

and it is going on.

(light instrumental music)

Early air travel was difficult,

and treacherous.

In a field dominated by men,

no one could even imagine

what a woman would be capable of achieving.

Amelia Earhart was a keen flyer.

She knew the task was difficult,

and opportunities for women to fly were hard to come by.

But she was determined to make a trip across the Atlantic.

You had to be, for a woman, independently wealthy,

to afford the lessons and to buy your plane,

and to maintain it.

So, Amelia worked at lots and lots of jobs,

she was very versatile, very creative,

and extremely adventurous,

and was determined that this was

what she wanted to do with her life.

Earhart had the obstacle

of public opinion to overcome.

She was only the 16th woman to earn her piloting license,

and she bought her own plane, second hand.

She slept in her bomber jacket for three days,

to make it look worn, like the men's.

Early in 1932,

Earhart was set to make the trip.

She had made it once before in 1928,

with two male copilots,

but this time she was going on her own.

She left on the 20th of May,

from Harbour Grace in Newfoundland.

The plane was state of the art for the time,

but it had no radio, obviously no GPS, no weather,

no radar, it was really, really pioneer flying,

and she was pioneering these event flights

in that period of intense aviation development

around the world.

She set off quietly,

fearing that if the publicity machine got rolling,

and there was some heat,

she didn't want to have to deal with it.

It was a difficult flight.

She flew through thick clouds and icy temperatures

and battled mechanical difficulties.

She was most dismayed to find that

not only her altimeter wasn't working,

but the exhaust manifold on her plane

was starting to catch on fire,

and this in itself was pretty bad,

and then later on it started vibrating very intensely,

so she thought, I've gotta just land this plane

as quickly as I could.

I curved inland until I found a suitable pasture.

I landed there after fighting

all the cows in the neighborhood,

and rolled up to a farmer's front door.

Despite not landing in Paris,

as she had planned,

Amelia earned even more fame,

as she became the first woman to fly solo

for 2,500 miles across the Atlantic,

earning the distinguished Flying Cross.

But she would not finish there.

She set seven women's aviation records

in speed and distance.

It was in 1937 from one of these record-breaking flights,

that she never returned.

Flying with copilot, Frederick J Noonan around the world,

their plane was lost somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

Amelia Earhart, US heroine of the air,

in desperate plight.

On the last lap of an around-the-world flight,

her plane comes down in the Pacific.

May a rescuer reach her in time.

She was pronounced dead in 1939,

but her name lived on.

Amelia Earhart was probably the most

inspirational woman for pilots,

and for women to try aviation.

And not only aviation,

but to try subjects and fields

that had often been the domain of men.

Little girls can be encouraged

to play with mechano and construction toys,

and equally boys can be encouraged to cook.

So that was her philosophy.

She deserves the welcome she gets.

And no other woman, and no man,

had flown both the Pacific and Atlantic, solo.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,

the USSR, was one of the two superpowers

that dominated the second half of the 20th century.

But its strength could not overcome

growing economic frailties,

and a clamor for reform.

The last of the Romanoffs

is driven from his throne, and later killed.

Since the 1917 revolution,

the Soviet state had exercised

totalitarian control over the economy,

overseeing all industrial activity,

and managing every aspect of political and social life.

In 1985, a new leader appeared,

whose more open approach was a realistic response

to the problems the USSR faced.

His name was Mikhail Gorbachev.

It's really important to understand

that at the beginning, in 1985,

when Gorbachev became General Secretary

of the communist party of the Soviet Union that

a lot of hopes were raised

that this could be the beginning of a new era,

for the Soviet Union.

This new era would be led by two reforms,

perestroika and glasnost.

The first meant economic reform.

Recent opinion polls

are the first of their kind

to suggest that only one in eight Soviets

believe perestroika is a workable solution.

The second, an easing of restrictions,

offering greater freedoms of speech,

religion and the press.

Gorbachev was applauded for these reforms in the west,

but at home, economic reform is slow,

and personal freedom meant dissatisfaction

could be openly expressed.

Bread lines and empty shelves

were still a part of everyday life.

Everything from meat to matches was scarce,

while billions were being pored

into maintaining the superpower posture.

And the more that the economic system began to stall,

the more that the political system

proved incapable of addressing underlying economic problems,

underlying social problems,

the greater the strength of these

centrifugal national forces

that ultimately were to tear

the former Soviet Union apart.

Adding to Gorbachev's problems,

was the fall of the communist regimes

in central and eastern Europe.

In East Germany, public pressure

tore down the most concrete symbol of the Cold War,

the Berlin Wall.

Gorbachev withdrew Red Army troops

from both East Germany,

and from a decades-long war in Afghanistan.

Both moves made him popular in the west,

but in Russia he was subjected

to criticism for being weak.

The most critical factor towards the end I think

was the loss of confidence on the part

of the political elite in the Soviet Union,

including Gorbachev himself.

While Gorbachev's star waned,

another's was on the rise.

Boris Yeltsin, initially close to Gorbachev

criticized the slow pace of perestroika.

Tensions increased between the two,

when Yeltsin won Russia's first popular

presidential election in June, 1991.

Boris Yeltsin, Russian president,

and former Soviet government member sacked by Gorbachev

had come to symbolize resistance to coup.

In early December, Yelstin,

speaking for Russia

and the leaders of the Ukraine and Belarus,

formally declared the USSR was no longer in existence.

On the 25th of December, 1991,

the Soviet Hammer and Sickle flag

flew over the Kremlin for the last time.

The United States of America

was now the world's sole global superpower.

I think the net effect of that has been

a destabilization of the international system.

For better or worse, to one degree or another,

the Cold War especially in Europe,

it did at least provide some degree

of stability in the international system,

in such a way that the United States

in particular could wage wars almost with impunity,

to decide, for example,

it would determine the shape of events

in the Middle East,

where once the Soviet Union had considerable influence.

It began in the early hours

of a June morning in 1972.

What followed would bring down an American president,

a scandal that so captivated the public consciousness,

it is now synonymous with abuse of power,

and obstruction of justice.

Richard Nixon was nearing the end of his first term,

when the Washington Post reported

on a series of crimes that would lead

all the way back to the White House.

With the threat of impeachment looming,

Nixon would be forced to resign.

Those crimes have become known as the Watergate scandal,

after the building where it all began.

Well the Watergate office complex

is a building in Washington which houses a hotel,

and offices.

Now what happened on the night of the famous burglary,

it was a second attempt by a group of operatives

loosely connected to the White House,

to break into the Democratic National Headquarters,

and see what political information they had.

It was political espionage.

The clandestine operation

was part of a greater plan

to make sure Nixon was reelected.

Nixon was going to win the election without difficulty.

He didn't specifically instruct the break-in,

but he created an atmosphere of paranoia in the White House

where these kinds of things,

very dodgy political operations, became the norm.

Nixon began his second term in office

after a landslide victory in November, 1972.

However, he couldn't shake the scandal.

Seven White House aides were indicted

for the Watergate crimes.

That I welcome this kind of examination,

because people have gotta know

whether or not their president is a crook.

Well I'm not a crook.

In the heat of the trials,

it was revealed that the president himself was involved,

and that an aide had tapes

of conversations implicating him.

I believed I was doing something

for the President of the United States.

When the tapes were turned over,

18 and a half minutes were missing.

Nixon had done all he could

to keep his name out of the operation,

but by 1974, he could no longer pretend.

I must put the interests of America first.

Therefore, I shall resign the presidency

effective at noon tomorrow.

He resigned on August the 8th,

three days after handing over the missing tape,

that held no doubt of the extent of his involvement.

Though he'd surrendered the evidence,

the former president never admitted his guilt.

Well the legacy of Watergate was

for a short time at least,

it created a reaction against

what is called the imperial presidency.

The imperial presidency was a term coined

at the height of the Watergate crisis,

to suggest that the presidency

was routinely flouting the Constitution,

going beyond the law.

The second it creates a popular distrust in government

on a level not seen really since

the beginnings of the Great Depression.

And the third one was,

now that a president had been driven from office,

Nixon, by the threat of impeachment,

there was an increasing tendency

by both political parties,

to look for malpractice in government.

Nixon was pardoned of all charges,

as Gerald Ford's first act after he was sworn in

as the succeeding president.

However, the hearings were being nationally televised,

and the damage was done.

I don't trust the man.

He isn't above the law.

The stain of an individual's greed

would color American politics

for decades to come.

In all the decisions I have made in my public life,

I have always tried to do what was best for the nation.

Cambodia, an ancient wooded society,

was the scene of one of the 20th century's worst genocides,

perpetrated not by an invading force,

but by its own leader.

Through the 1960's and 70's,

civil war between the ruling Prince Sihanouk,

and country's military, tore Cambodia apart.

Finally, General Lon Nol, deposed the monarchy,

and become President of the newly declared Khmer Republic.

At the same time,

the country was affected by the conflict on its borders,

where North Vietnamese and US-led forces were at war.

More than 750,000 Cambodians

were killed by American bombing,

that aimed at destroying

North Vietnamese supply lines, and communities.

So big strategic issues,

the Cambodian people were just caught in the middle,

were never considered as a crucial factor by anybody.

They suffered enormously.

Such a violent, volatile climate

created an opportunity for the communist Khmer Rouge,

led by the French-educated Pol Pot.

He took power when the Khmer Rouge

gained control of Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh,

on the 17th of April, 1975.

Although hundreds of thousands have died

during Cambodia's civil war,

the new regime would take a far higher toll.

Mass executions rid Pol Pot

of all his opponents.

The middle class was wiped out.

Every time you have a revolution,

the people who have been kicked around,

start to kick around when they take power.

This is just, they don't go for an equal society.

They're non-forgiving and non-compromising.

The country's name was changed, to Kampuchea,

and all civil rights and liberties were abolished.

Hospitals, colleges, and factories, were all shut down.

I mean what they were trying to achieve

was the impossible.

We could have the fastest, strongest,

most purist revolution in the world.

So therefore everybody's gonna get to work

for the elites rather than (muffled) to work,

growing rice, which is what they did.

In the process of course,

there was enormous central damage.

The people were (muffled).

Khmer Rouge regime

drove millions into the country.

Millions more who objected, were slaughtered.

People who were too slow to move,

or refused to leave, were killed on the spot.

Executions were not always necessary,

as starvation accounted for many enemies of the state.

As more and more people were accused of far-fetched crimes,

the Khmer Rouge turned to a system of killing fields,

establishing hundreds all over Cambodia.

Anyone with an education, doctors, teachers,

monks, journalists, and artists,

were singled out.

No one was immune.

Children and babies whose parents

had been executed were murdered,

because according to Pol Pot,

to stop the weeds you must also pull up their roots.

In just four years, millions of lives were lost

from mass killings and starvation.

On the 7th of January, 1979,

Vietnam invaded Cambodia,

overthrowing the Khmer Rouge, who fled to the jungles.

From his jungle headquarters,

Pol Pot continued to lead the Khmer Rouge,

until he was arrested in 1997.

A United Nations war crimes tribunal was established,

but Pol Pot died of natural causes in 1998,

without any charges being laid against him.

Following the suffering inflicted by the Khmer Rouge,

Cambodia's recovery would not be easy.

One in five of its citizens is believed

to have died in the genocide.

Millions of landmines remain buried around the countryside,

the tragic legacy of both the Vietnam conflict,

and American bombing, and the madness of Pol Pot.

(light orchestral music)

In the final years of the 20th century,

one incredible medical achievement

will be cause for celebration, and uncertainty,

raising polarizing questions

about the ethical boundaries of science.

Dolly the sheep was born seven months

before the rest of the world would learn about her,

giving her makers enough time to patent her creation.

She was a clone of an adult sheep,

and groundbreaking,

because scientists didn't think adult cells could be cloned.

But the general conclusion

that most scientists arrived at,

was that whilst it was possible

to produce cloned offspring using embryonic cells,

cells that were more advanced, more specialized,

more differentiated,

they didn't give rise to viable pregnancies,

and to offspring, and so really by the mid-1980's,

the conclusion was that cloning,

in the sort of way that Dolly was created,

was not possible.

Dolly's life began

when a cell from the mammary gland

of a deceased adult ewe was electrically pulsed,

encouraging it to bond with an egg cell,

without a nucleus.

The new method of cloning combined two cells,

and then plants them into the uterus of the living ewe.

The team at Roslin, in Edinburgh, in the 1990's,

they brought together a group of people,

and one of the key individuals was Keith Campbell.

And he realized it was important

that a cell cycle of the donor egg,

needed to be similar to that of the recipient egg.

The team's creation of Dolly

was an amazing feat.

She was the only one of her 277 fellow embryos

to survive to term.

Dolly's name is a tribute to Dolly Parton,

and the sheep's origin as an adult breast cell.

The cell had come from a six-year-old sheep,

which was approximately the length of Dolly's own life,

half the average age for her breed.

When the world found out about Dolly,

they wanted to know whether this technique

could extend to human cloning.

Creating a child in this way,

simply would be unacceptably risky for the child.

Though the possibility is not discounted,

the potential for defects in the resulting child is high,

and in tests with mammals,

the technique only worked up to 10% of the time.

The reason why the team at Roslin

were primarily interested in cloning,

wasn't to produce identical offspring,

it was really to derive, or try to derive

stem cells or an alternative way of generating stem cells,

which can be used for research purposes,

but also for therapeutic purposes.

I think if you have the idea

of using the cloning technique,

to create tissue or cartilage or whatever,

that might be put to use in helping

real live, but ill human beings to get better,

then that is probably quite sensible,

but if you're thinking of human reproductive cloning,

where you create a person to carry organs,

that is absolutely repugnant, and will not be allowed,

will not happen.

Though Dolly barely saw the 21st century,

she left a lasting legacy.

And the legacy of cloning was stimulate research

into the creation of very important stem cells,

and there are great therapeutic applications

for the treatment of various diseases.

Dolly opened the way for experimentation.

Her short life showed the successful cloning technique,

that has led to further innovation

in the scientific community.

He was a member of the biggest band in the world,

but also a solo musician, father, and peace activist.

Ultimately his fame and success

would lead him to a violent end that shocked the world.

Beatlemania has ceased to be a phenomenon,

and seems to have become a way of life.

The Beatles were a breakout English band,

who produced hit after hit,

that connected with millions of fans around the world.

A group was formed by John Lennon in the late 50's.

It went through a few reincarnations,

and by 1962, the band was made up

of Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison,

and Ringo Starr.

The Beatles' fame had been epic.

Country after country succumbed

to the charms of this young band,

with an uncanny emotional connection to their audience.

Even after their breakup in 1970,

the Beatles carried their fame for years.

And in the 1980's,

Lennon would lose his life over his status as a celebrity.

On December the 8th, 1980,

John Lennon was shot outside his apartment block.

Eyewitnesses said the assassin

made no attempt to run away,

and was smiling as police arrested him.

Cradled in the arms of his wife, Yoko,

the former Beatle was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital

a few blocks away, where extensive resuscitation efforts

failed to revive him.

The assassin's name was Mark David Chapman.

The motive behind Chapman's assassination,

even to this day, are unclear.

It has been known that some fans become so obsessed

with their idols,

that their love spills into, not exactly hatred,

but a kind of a sense that

they want to destroy the thing that they love,

the idol that they love and worship.

Years later a much more straightforward,

and much more intelligible explanation

came out of an interview with Chapman,

when he just said,

"I wanted to be instantly a somebody."

I thought by killing him,

I would acquire his fame.

And that in a way is more sinister.

I wasn't killing a real person.

I killed an image, I killed an album cover.

I don't expect them to forgive me.

By mid-morning

the gates of John Lennon's luxury apartment block

had become a shrine.

Lennon's fans were shocked.

They held a candlelight vigil for him on December 14th.

The problem was that people couldn't compute,

was that someone had actually killed Lennon deliberately,

cold-bloodedly, and mercilessly.

Chapman's actions elevated Lennon's fame,

contributing to an intensity that increased

over the 20th century, and into the next.

After his death, John Lennon's music

would remain immortal in the hearts of the public.

I imagine in years to come,

we will regard the Beatles' catalog

in the same way that we regard Shakespeare's plays today.

The First World War ended in 1918,

not with surrender, but with an armistice.

The German army went back over the frontiers

it had crossed in 1914,

and the process of settling the peace began.

The leaders of the big four,

the winners of the war,

Britain, France, the USA, and Italy,

met along with a number of minor countries

at the start of 1919.

Soviet Russia, though the successor to a country

that had been in alliance with the victors,

was not invited,

and neither were the losers.

The four major powers on the Anton side,

the so-called allies,

discussed among themselves

during the Paris peace conference,

the terms that they would impose

upon the beaten central powers.

So there was never a question of negotiation,

and of course within this one-sided arrangement,

lay the seeds of much of the distrust of the treaty.

After six months of negotiations,

the delegates to the Paris Peace Conference

reached a series of compromises,

fashioned into a series of treaties.

At Versailles, the victorious allies

planned their peace,

but not one of France's making,

though she stood to lose most,

should a militant Germany rise again.

Well the key points of the treaty

insofar as they related to Germany,

were really three elements.

First of all, Germany would be disarmed,

she would lose all her navy,

she would be reduced to a rump army

of about a hundred thousand.

Secondly, she was gonna lose a certain amount of territory.

The major territory lost was on the eastern border,

particularly in Poland, Czechoslovakia.

And the third element of the terms imposed upon Germany,

were financial, the reparations,

the insistence that Germany

had to take responsibility for causing the war,

and if that was the case, they then had to pay for it,

and these were astronomical sums,

about six billion pounds at the time,

which is about 300 billion pounds today.

The treaty was formally signed

in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles,

on June 28th, 1919,

five years to the day after the assassination

of Archduke Franz Ferdinand,

which had initiated the cascade of events that led to war.

The War Guilt Clause,

the fact that the treaty was imposed on Germany,

rather than negotiated,

and the enormous financial penalty,

all seen with hindsight

to have been designed to ensure instability.

Why was Germany,

in his judgment an undefeated Germany,

accepting the penalties of defeat?

There was a feeling among many Germans

that the treaty was something that sooner or later

they needed to overturn.

There was also a sense that

the financial instability of the 1920's,

in Germany in particular,

was as a direct result of that treaty.

How Schmidt never blamed the men

who had caused the war,

instead he blamed the men who had signed the peace.

With an unstable government,

and an economic crisis in full swing,

extreme parties started to emerge,

on both the left and the right of the political landscape.

You could say the long-term effects

of the Versailles settlement was creating

such a feeling of disgruntlement in Germany,

that at some point they would want redress from this,

they would want redress particularly

in terms of the territory that was taken from Germany,

and I think it is fair to say,

that the determination among Germans generally

to gain revenge for Versailles,

laid the seeds for the rise of Hitler,

and the demand of the return of all the territory

that ultimately caused the Second World War.

Change revolutionized how we communicated,

conducted business, and accessed entertainment,

all made possible by the invention of a single device.

For the first half of the century,

electronic devices were controlled

by vacuum tube triodes, invented in 1906.

The three-terminal connection,

acted as both an on and off switch in a device,

as well as an amplifier of sound.

Now one of the problems as I say with valves is

they've got lots of things going wrong with them.

There's cumbersome, hot, unreliable, and so on.

A new improved conductor would come

from the combined talents of three minds.

The three culprits who directly invented the transistor

was a man called William Shockley,

and two people who worked with him in his lab,

Walter Brattain, and Jack Bardeen.

And they were working together for Bell Labs.

Bell Labs very much interested in electronics,

and all the sorts of things you can do with it.

Bardeen and Brattain

experimented with two gold-point contacts,

applied to a germanium crystal,

and observed the signal being produced

with the output power greater than the input.

So you have to imagine beavering away,

when what you're trying to do is on a very small scale,

put three wires into something,

a piece of silicon or germanium,

to make it work in this interesting way like a valve would.

And eventually, just before Christmas on 1947,

Bardeen and Brattain managed it.

A few months later,

Shockley invented a more robust type of device,

with a layered, sandwich structure.

The Bell Company unveiled the group's invention

called a transistor, in 1947,

winning them the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.

This smaller, easier to make amplifier,

has been made possible by developing the transistor.

Very quickly Bell Labs realized this was big.

They opened a factory in 1950,

to start making this in volume,

and pretty soon after that,

we started to get applications of the transistor.

And in 1954, the transistor radio

was available for sale,

making radios truly portable.

In 1958, Jack Kilby from Texas Instruments

found a way to make smaller transistors,

by making all the parts out of the same block of material,

and adding the metal needed to connect them

as a layer on top of it.

Kilby's integrated circuit,

now led technological change in leaps and bounds.

Transistor technology infiltrated military

and computer applications.

At Manchester University,

the world's first transistor-based computer

was put together.

By today's standards, really rather stupid,

but at the time this was a big breakthrough.

Space was a new frontier

that could only be reached

because of the technological advancements

transistors opened up.

By the end of the 20th century,

the most advanced circuits contained

several hundred millions of components,

on an area no larger than a fingernail.

The transistor, in many ways,

is one of those really pivotal inventions,

an invention which became an innovation.

My definition of innovation is,

ideas that create value.

Without question, the transistor has done that,

commercial and social value,

it's changed the world.

When Korea gained its independence from Japan

at the end of World War II,

it was a divided and uncertain nation.

The North was now controlled by Soviets.

The South by the Americans.

A physical divide that reflected an ideological one,

between communism and democracy.

The partition of Korea,

the casualty of the quick end of the Second World War,

in the Far East.

The Americans had suggested, very rapidly

after the atomic bombs were dropped,

and the Soviets invaded,

the Red Army invaded the northern part

of the Korean Peninsula.

They had to suggest an arbitrary line,

so that the Americans could occupy most of Japan

and part of the Korean Peninsula.

So they suggested the 38th Parallel.

Rounding up and mopping up,

that's been the recent task

of the United Nations land forces in Korea.

Between 1945 and 1950,

rival groups in North and South Korea,

maintained their volatile truce.

In the South, the American-backed regime

moved towards a declaration of an independent republic,

while the Soviet-sponsored North

mobilized not under the banner of invasion,

but of unification.

By 1948, both North and South

had declared themselves to be independent nations,

as they remain today.

The North, backed by the Soviet Union,

prepared its army, and in 1950,

invaded across the 38th parallel.

Taking the capital, they expected a quick surrender,

and unification of the country on their terms.

The peaceful southern democracy

was taken by surprise

by this communist Blitzkrieg.

The but South pushed back

when the United Nations, under American leadership,

came to its aid.

Is the goal merely to protect South Korea?

Or is the goal to overturn and roll back

the communist revolution in the North?

Do we believe that this is a completely illegitimate,

and fundamentally aggressive regime,

that has no right in the parlance of today,

they've lost the responsibility to protect

their own population?

The war was waged on the ground

by both regular Army and guerrilla units.

Red soldiers

who probably don't even know what the war's about anyway,

are interrogated by an American intelligence officer.

And in the air,

where it became the first conflict to involve jet fighters,

in significant numbers.

With international support for the South

threatening to overwhelm the North,

China entered the war in 1950.

For three years, a savage war, in often frigid conditions

was fought without any clear advantage being gained,

and at a cost of millions of lives.

Fighting ended in 1953 with an armistice.

But the war has never officially stopped.

With the friction, suspicion, and danger

in the Korean Peninsula,

that occupies newspaper headlines to this day.

Well the legacy very much remains

in the form of Korean division,

the North for the South Koreans,

is kind of a lost limb.

They're waiting to kind of get it back

and to refill those provinces

and to bring economic development

in their new South Korean model, to the North.

From the North Korean perspective,

the war never ended.

It's a very very palpable present conflict still.

(light orchestral music)