Original subtitles

♪ Terrible Tudors Gorgeous Georgians

♪ Slimy Stuarts, vile Victorians Woeful wars, ferocious fights

♪ Dingy castles, daring knights

♪ Horrors that defy description Cut-throat Celts, awful Egyptians

♪ Vicious Vikings, cruel crimes Punishment from ancient times

♪ Romans, rotten, rank and ruthless Cavemen, savage, fearsome, toothless

♪ Groovy Greeks, brainy sages Mean and measly Middle Ages

♪ Gory stories, we do that

♪ And your host, a talking rat

♪ The past is no longer a mystery

♪ Welcome to... Horrible Histories! ♪

Horrible Histories presents...

Our Precious Planet.

How do the sideburns look? Bushy enough?

Oh, you bet they are!

Right. I'm Charles Darwin.

Scientist, Victorian national treasure,

and 1852 Facial Hair Of The Year.

Third place.

And this... is Planet Earth.

Our home, and home to countless species of animals,

plants, birds, fish and insects.

And perhaps the most fascinating of all these

is this amazing creature.

The humble earthworm!

Cut! Sorry, Charles, if we could just leave the worms out of it

and concentrate on the big stuff. No problem. Cut the worms.

Yeah. Got it. Take two!

The Planet Earth, this miracle, floating in space.

And you know what else is a miracle? It's these little fellows...

Cut! Cut! Hello!

Oh, for goodness' sake. You've slipped into worms again, Charles.

Did I? Yes. I don't think I did.

You like worms. Love 'em. Wrote a book about them.

The Formation Of Vegetable Mould Through The Action Of Worms.

Sounds like a right page-turner.

It's just this programme's not about worms. It's not? No. Right.

Take three!

Third time lucky.

The Planet Earth. It's inspired us to invent art,

technology and... music!

I've asked my son to entertain the worms!

Right, cut! What?!

I want to see if they react to music. Charles! Hit it!

♪ Worms

♪ How I love them, how I love them

♪ They're so firm and wriggly

♪ Worms How I love them, how I love them

♪ They make me shy and giggly... ♪ Cut!

Everybody! # Worms... ♪

Talk about an earworm.

As well as worms, our planet has many other riches

buried underground, like oil, coal and gold,

which ideally should all be left exactly where they are,

but enormous amounts of the gold got dug up

during the Gold Rush in 19th-century America.

Good job the oil and coal are still there,

What? We're taking all of them too?

Unbelievable!

Hello, stranger!

Good afternoon, ma'am.

I will take a shovel, please.

Sure thing, friend.

That'll be 40 bucks. 40 bucks?!

Come on now. Back home, I can get a shovel for 20 cents.

That's, um... 200 times the regular back home price, yes.

Exactly! No-one's going to pay that.

Howdy, stranger.

Shovel! 40 bucks.

You got it.

Hoo-hoo-hoo!

Gold, here I come!

I's a-gonna be rich!

Fine. I'll take a shovel. That'll be 50 bucks.

50 bucks?! You said it was 40. Well, now I only got two left.

You could always wait until I've got one left. That'll be 60.

And that's with a discount on account of I like your smile.

Well, I don't like yours. Fine.

I'll take the $50 one. Second-best investment you ever made.

Here. Second-best? My last jar of Gold Grease.

Ten bucks. Gold Grease?

Strip naked, coat yourself in it, roll down a hill,

picking up gold as you go.

You must think I'm an idiot! Have you got any Gold Grease?

I'll take it! Last ten bucks!

But I don't have a care in the world on account of I'm going to strike...

♪ Gold! Gold! Always believed I'd strike gold

♪ I may be clean out of dough

♪ But I'm here to have a go

♪ Always believed, yeah, he'll strike...

♪ Gold! Gold!

♪ Thousands of dollars I'll earn

♪ I can't afford to return

♪ So there's no going home

♪ Always believed, yeah

♪ Once they discovered gold

♪ Thousands came here to mine the land

♪ It has gotten quite out of hand

♪ The trees and the cows have gone

♪ Crime is on the rise every day

♪ You might find some gold though Hooray!

♪ Going to be rich anyway The amount they pay

♪ Why did I ever make this call?

♪ Cos with a little luck I could have it all

♪ Gold! Gold!

♪ Let's go and look for some gold

♪ Hundreds of spades I have sold

♪ I'm on a massive roll

♪ Always believe, yeah

♪ You'll strike gold! ♪

Pack it up, boys. We done run out of gold!

We've dug it all up. Excuse me? You heard, boy.

Dangnabbit! That can't be true!

Can I get a refund on these, please? It's against policy.

This is the worst day of my life.

Hi, there. I'm the Mayor of this here town.

Pithole. You know, just three years ago,

there was nothing here. No town, no people.

Now we've got 20,000 people, 54 hotels, a post office

and a theatre! And I can tell you how it happened in one word.

Oil!

We're getting the oil out of the ground here

faster than you could say potential ecological disaster!

And the good news is that oil brings jobs, money, civilisation

and the American Dream. It's the perfect town.

If you don't mind the permanent smell of poo.

We're still working on the plumbing. Ooh!

But, hey, we're a young town

and we've got all the time in the world to figure that stuff out.

After all, we've got so much oil

that this town's going to be here forever!

Hey, everyone! The price of oil just dropped cos there's so much of it!

We're all out of business! Let's get out of here!

Oh, no.

Hi, I'm the Mayor and I guess...

...the only resident of Pithole. No!

I'm still here. Oh, boy. BREAKS WIND

So...

If you like derelict ghost towns,

why not pay us a visit?

You may want to give it ten minutes. BREAKS WIND

Yes, it's me, Henry VIII! And you're right to be excited.

It wasn't just the Americans that were gobbling up

the planet's precious resources. We English were doing it too.

And when I say "we", I actually mean me.

Timber!

Oh, no, no, no, no, no!

Ah, the forests of England. One of our greatest resources.

Vast swathes of wooded land teeming with animal life.

Beautiful birds. Nice tune, dude.

Hello there, little fellow.

You know, it's these vast forests and woodlands

that make England what it is today.

Because we can chop them all down and make warships.

2,000 oak trees per boat.

And we can use the rest for charcoal for the ironworks.

Oh, this is such a nice... Um, Your Majesty?

There may be consequences to stripping England's woodlands.

For a start, it wouldn't be sustainable.

What do we do the next time? Nick all the land off the monasteries!

We've already done that. Well, we can use the warships,

made from these noble plants,

to conquer other countries and chop all their trees down. Good times!

Yes, but what happens when their trees run out? I don't know!

Pass a law to plant some more or something.

You're the adviser. Boring me now.

Oh!

If you want to make yourself useful, go fetch that squirrel. Cook it.

I'm hungry.

SINGS TO HIMSELF

So we either dug up or chopped down a lot of our planet's resources,

but at least we didn't wipe out a load of the animal species too.

What? The animals too?!

Oh, come on! My book shouldn't have been called The Origin Of Species,

it should have been called the end of them! Wait...

Please tell me there are still some worms left.

Time now to meet some new fluffy and feathered friends.

With more and more of the world's species endangered,

we asked some people from history to come on the show

with some of the very last living examples

of some wonderful animals. I can't wait to meet them.

This is the last of the dodos from the late 17th century.

A large, flightless bird living on the island of Mauritius.

Sorry. I was under the impression that this was a cookery show.

You... cooked the last dodo? It's not my fault!

The dodo has... had... the very unfortunate combination

of being both very tasty and very trusting.

And very not good at flying away from people that want to eat it.

This is delicious!

And an absolute disgrace!

You can sit there and think about what you've done

while we meet our next guest.

Richard is a sailor from the 18th century

and he is bringing with him the last ever Steller's sea cow.

Oh. It was not made clear that you wanted it alive.

That's totally what happened to me. This is...

...was... a tasty and trusting sea creature.

Tasty and trusting. Tasty and trusting. Tasty and trusting.

To be fair, it was floating on the surface, almost waiting.

You know? After humans discovered Steller's sea cows,

it was 27 years before we'd eaten them all. I'm not surprised!

It's delicious! Try the blubber. It's nice.

Right, let's move on. A live report now from 1918

and Cincinnati, where we will meet

the last-ever living Carolina parakeet.

Oh, I'm so sorry. Is this not a fashion show?

Now that is a lovely hat.

Are they hard to get? Um... they are now.

Harold? This is a STEM jobs fair.

I work in science.

You sell cakes at the Science Museum. It's not the same thing.

Interested in seeing the world?

Getting your hands dirty, exploiting our natural resources?

Join my whaling expedition and I'll make you rich!

We can kill over 100 whales in a single voyage.

That's awful! The cruelty's bad enough,

but if you keep hunting them like that, we'll have none left.

Yeah, that'll be a shame, given how useful they are.

Every part of the whale makes money, you see.

The bones are used in clothing, the oil's used in lamps.

Ahh! And we eat their vomit.

Well, I think it's disgusting, particularly the vomit thing.

Then I better not tell you about using their poo to dye clothes.

Can I ask how you lost your...?

And your...? Minor work injuries!

Yeah, can take hours to kill a whale

and by then they've smashed the boat and most of your limbs to pieces.

Harold, shall we?

Oh, not again!

Is that my other leg?

Interested in oil prospecting?

Oh! Gosh! There's another one.

You could explore our beautiful planet

and get rich in an instant! Ohhh! That's interesting.

Hang on. Are you what happens to oil prospectors?

Well, I grant you there's poor sanitation

and fires are common, but I was fur trapping when I got attacked

by the bear, so that doesn't count. Fur trapping?

Yep. If you're interested in fur trapping, they've got a stall there

and an actual bear you can play with.

That sounds very dangerous. Yeah, it is.

GROWLING Oh, look. The bear escaped.

The bear escaped! Aargh!

Can we go home now? Want a job building the American railroads?

Oh, railroads!

You don't need qualifications. Just a steady hand.

Perfect. Great. We're giving people a try-out right now.

All you have to do is carry a box of nitro-glycerine

from one table to another.

Isn't nitro-glycerine incredibly explosive?

Yes, it is. That's why we use it to blast holes in the mountains

for the train tunnels. Right,

you just have to be really, really care...

...care... Oh...

Achoo!

Oh!

You know what? I might go back to selling cakes at the museum.

SHE SIGHS

We've been trying to tame the planet for hundreds of years

by creating beautiful gardens or farming the land.

And one of the first people to write a guide book

on how to farm the land was Thomas Tusser.

Bit of an odd fish, this one.

Hello. Are you Thomas Tusser?

Why, yes, that is me. How can I help, agriculturally?

I'm looking for some advice on farming and my mate, Steve,

thinks you might be able to help. Ah!

A cow, good of milk, big of bulk,

hale and sound, is yearly, for profit, as good as a pound.

MOOING OK.

Get a cow then. Nice little money-spinner, is it?

Yet every year have I proved before now

as good for the purse is a sow as a cow.

Right. So a pig, then?

Keep one or keep both, do as thou will,

then all will be saved and nothing be spilled.

Why are you talking like that? It's all from a book written by me

called 500 Points Of Good Husbandry.

Should probably just call it farming, like everyone else does.

Hang on. There are 500 of these?

I gives all my knowledge quite strictly in rhyme.

That way you remember it every time.

Just starting to get a little bit annoying.

You could buy my book, the advice is all sound,

and that way you'll skip all my prancing around.

Stop that now. Yes, my wisdom I usually serve up in writing.

Turn up in person, there's usually fighting. Please stop rhyming!

With your permission, I'll now take my leave.

And give me regards to our mutual friend Steve! Right, that's it!

Sorry! Come back here!

In France, if we weren't farming ze land,

we were turning it into huge fancy gardens.

Ze fanciest of zem all were those at Versailles,

filled with stunning flowers and trees, fountains, lakes

and exotic animals, zey were truly a marvel for the eye,

if not always for the nose.

OK, OK, turn.

Voila! Ze gardens of Louis XIV's palace of Versailles.

We're not allowed here! No, it's OK.

Anyone can come in, as long as they don't have smallpox.

Oh!

That's actually pretty strict. There's a lot of smallpox about.

Open your heart and listen to...

FART Oh, sacre bleu!

Pardonnez-moi. I didn't mean to ruin ze moment.

What are you doing behind zere? There are no toilets at the palace

so some of us use the garden. Bof.

Open your heart and listen... Madame and monsieur,

King Louis XIV approaches!

Morning, Dennis.

Just looking for a vacant bush with some double-ply leaves.

The bees, they are covered in poo poo!

Come away, Marie! Come away! Come away! Come!

Come.

Morning!

Pardon my pantalon cough. FART

You need a hat and a sword to walk through these gardens,

but it's OK. You can... hire them... from the concierge. Ah!

This way, Marie! It's quieter down here.

SQUELCH Oh! Oh, no!

Oh, no, no, no. It's OK, Marie.

It's just elephant poo.

The King keeps exotic animals, so it's fine.

Come. Ooh!

Ahh... That one is human.

Aaah! My darling, nothing is going as I had planned it,

but listen...

I brought you here to ask you to make me

ze happiest man... FART

Oh, excusez-moi.

Zat was me. My darling,

will you marry me?

Er... didn't you just drop that in a massive poo?

Ah, yes, but... And you picked it up?

I kind of had to. This isn't going to work.

But I love you! No... Ooh! Can you keep it down

for one second? Yep. FART

No, no... No!

FARTY POOING

I think I'll give that place a swerve on my next voyage.

Yes, I love to travel and explore this wonderful planet

in all its glory.

Thankfully, by my time,

we adventurers knew that the world was round,

unlike some of my predecessors.

Would you look at that?

Marvellous!

Oh, dear! SMASHES

I'm sure it's fine.

BELL RINGS

It's day one at Grant Academy's Planet Week.

As Geography teacher Mr Singh got lost on the way to school,

headteacher Mrs Thomas has brought in a last-minute substitute.

Welcome to Historical Educating.

I'm really patting myself on the back for this one.

Mr Democritus is a Greek traveller

and a mathematician from the 5th century BC.

So he should know a thing or two about the planet.

Hello, children. So let's check if you're familiar with the basics.

What shape is the planet?

It's a globe, sir. Forgive me. That's ridiculous.

The world really is...

...a flat disc.

Shaped like Achilles' shield,

but slightly tilted.

How come everything doesn't just slide off?

"How come everything doesn't just slide off?" Look, let me explain.

Imagine this is the Earth.

OK? And...

...these are people.

As you can see, when it tilts, things do not slide off.

Oh, no, they do.

I made a terrible mistake.

Aaaaaah!

Grab a hold of something! Quick! Before you slide off the planet,

you fools! Mr Democritus has been called in

to see the headteacher. I'm going to have to ask you to leave.

You're fired. Yeah, fine.

You might have to wait for the Earth to tilt towards the door there.

Luckily, Mrs Thomas has managed to secure another replacement

Geography teacher at even shorter notice.

Mr Snorri Sturluson was a famous Viking chronicler.

We Vikings are excellent navigators. We have sailed

all around the world and you can do this because, as the sagas tell us,

the world is round, flat and surrounded by oceans.

And the land we are standing on is made of dead frost giant.

The god Odin killed it and turned its skull into a sky!

And the skull sky is held in place by four giant dwarves!

And the sea is the giant's blood!

You might want to make notes.

He's cool. He let me hold his axe.

Mr Sturluson has also been called in to see Mrs Thomas

for a quiet chat. The world is not held up by four giant dwarves!

Isn't it? What happened to them? The dwarves have been stolen!

Arm yourselves! To the boats!

And you're fired!

Have we tilted back yet?

Of course, the world is round.

Well, ish.

And if we look after it, hopefully, it will stay that way.

Oh, for goodness' sake!

Of course, trying to save the planet isn't new.

Long before there was Greta, there were other environmental pioneers,

desperately trying to do good, but in those early days,

hardly anyone else thought there was a problem.

Has anyone got any more tape?

Sorting out the beefs of the past... I'm the law, Hannibal!

...with the justice of today.

You illegally parked your elephant in the Alps!

Welcome to Time Beefs With Judge Rinder.

Rachel Carson, marine biologist and conservationist

from the 20th century, helped kick off the environmental movement.

She wants fewer chemicals used in farming because they kill insects

and damage nature.

The defendants, representatives from the US chemical industry,

want her to stop being a pest.

Miss Carson, as I understand it,

in addition to being a marvellous environmental campaigner,

you're also a very famous author. Isn't that right? Yes, that's right.

Now I believe that farmers should work with nature and not against it.

Chemicals and pesticides pushed by these companies

may kill pests, but they also kill beneficial insects.

Good riddance! Ssh! Talking! Do carry on.

I have been the subject of many attacks in the press.

Communist! Like that. One letter published in the New York Times

even said that we can manage perfectly well

without animals and birds.

My ideas are all explained in my best-selling book

Silent Spring, available now.

Should have stayed a bit more silent.

Excuse me, this is my courtroom. You understand chemical formulas?

Right. Well, here's one for you.

One part me talking equals one part you shutting up.

Understood? Now,

I'm willing to listen to any reasonable arguments.

Your Honour, we have written our own version of the first chapter

of her book. It's called The Desolate Year.

Imagine a world without pesticides. You open your front door... Bugs!

You get in your car... Bugs!

You go for a picnic in the countryside... Bugs!

There are meant to be bugs in the countryside!

I wish they were in book shops so they ate your book!

It wouldn't take them long to eat your tiny...

You guys are certainly bugging me.

Miss Carson, I shall stop them immediately. Thank you.

Well, it's a win for the bugs!

Bugs one, progress zero.

God dag! It's me, Swedish engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin.

Today I wanted to talk to you about plastics.

There have been many forms of plastics since the Middle Ages

when they used to make it out of bones or shells.

In 1907, Leo Baekeland invented

the first-ever, mass-produced, man-made synthetic plastic.

And he called it Bakelite.

PHONE RINGS

Please don't call me while I'm at work!

Since then, we've invented plastic, well, everything.

The real revolution came when I invented...

...the plastic bag!

Imagine what environmental good this plastic bag could do.

No more need to chop down trees to make paper bags!

And this bag will last forever!

You could just use it over and over and over again!

Hey, these plastic bags are really popular. Told you.

Companies are buying billions of them. And why wouldn't they?

Wait... Billions? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But these degrade over centuries.

The whole point of these is that we re-use the same ones.

Ah, people seem to prefer throwing them away and getting another one.

But I've been using this one for ages!

But this one's filthy. Here, have another one. I've got loads.

No...

This is not...

What have I done?!

This is too much!

Plastic bags! Can you believe it?

They were invented to try and save the environment!

I mean, the idea was good. The end result? Less so.

In all honesty, I'm a bit shocked

about some of the things done to our precious planet since I was around.

But I hear things ARE changing.

And people are realising we'll need to protect

this wonderful world we live in if we want to keep it.

I know we can do it.

Together.

From now on, let's be the good guys.

♪ Our planet We should see the signs

♪ We're damaging it over time

♪ History we must now rewind

♪ To undo our mistakes

♪ Romans reared lots of livestock

♪ For farming Which released methane

♪ From farting Plus blacksmith forgers were

♪ Harming the atmosphere

♪ So you're a Roman Sounds like you had no plan

♪ Shame you didn't know, man But you were just the first man

♪ That's pretty bad, guys.

♪ Huh?

♪ Tudors building warships

♪ Out of forests

♪ They stripped the land leaving no trees

♪ Wasn't a blip because

♪ It is still happening

♪ So you're a Tudor Shame you didn't think more

♪ Taking all that wood for ships to go and fight wars

♪ That's pretty bad, guys

♪ Huh?

♪ Industrial Revolution

♪ An increase in air pollution

♪ Machines built with no solution

♪ For our longevity

♪ Black gold, life changed forever

♪ Makes plastic Degrades, like, never

♪ And fumes that are not so clever

♪ So it's time to think again

♪ It's got to end now Listen to my friend while

♪ Greta comprehends how we can make a change now

♪ Be a kind guy Cleaning up the seas guy

♪ Planting lots of trees guy Power from the breeze guy

♪ Let's be the good guys... ♪

Woooo! Ooh!

♪ The past is no longer a mystery

♪ Hope you enjoyed... Horrible Histories! ♪