History

Video documentaries about history of the world

The Vietnam War episode 8

The Vietnam War episode 8

History / 2 minutes of reading / / By

The Vietnam War episode 8 – The History of the World In The Vietnam War episode 8 – with morale plummeting in Vietnam, President Nixon begins withdrawing American troops. As news breaks of an unthinkable massacre committed by American soldiers, the public debates the rectitude of the war, while an incursion into Cambodia reignites antiwar protests with tragic consequences.     In an immersive 360-degree narrative, Burns and Novick tell the epic story of the Vietnam War as it has never before been told on film. THE VIETNAM WAR features testimony from nearly 80 witnesses, including many Americans who fought in the […]

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The Vietnam War episode 7

The Vietnam War episode 7

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The Vietnam War episode 7 – The Veneer of Civilization In The Vietnam War episode 7, public support for the war declines, and American men of draft age face difficult decisions and wrenching moral choices. After police battle with demonstrators in the streets of Chicago, Richard Nixon wins the presidency, promising law and order at home and peace overseas. In Vietnam, the war goes on and soldiers on all sides witness terrible savagery and unflinching courage.     The Vietnam War episode 7 – The Veneer of Civilization   In an immersive 360-degree narrative, Burns and Novick tell the epic story of

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Story of 1

The Story of 1

History, Science / 2 minutes of reading / / By

The Story of 1 is a documentary about the history of numbers, and in particular, the number 1. It was presented by former Monty Python member Terry Jones.     Terry Jones first journeys to Africa, where bones have been discovered with notches in them. However, there is no way of knowing if they were used for counting. Jones then discusses the Ishango bone, which must have been used for counting, because there are 60 scratches on each side of the bone. Jones declares this “the birth of one”; a defining moment in history of mathematics. He then journeys to

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History of Christianity episode 6

A History of Christianity episode 6 – God in the Dock

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A History of Christianity episode 6: Diarmaid MacCulloch’s own life story makes him a symbol of a distinctive feature about Western Christianity – scepticism, a tendency to doubt which has transformed both Western culture and Christianity.     A History of Christianity episode 6 – God in the Dock   In the final programme in the series, he asks where that change came from. He challenges the simplistic notion that faith in Christianity has steadily ebbed away before the relentless advance of science, reason and progress, and shows instead how the tide of faith perversely flows back in. Despite the

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A History of Christianity episode 5

A History of Christianity episode 5 – Protestantism – The Evangelical Explosion

History / 1 minute of reading / / By

A History of Christianity episode 5: Diarmaid MacCulloch traces the growth of an exuberant expression of faith that has spread across the globe – Evangelical Protestantism. Today, it is associated with conservative politics, but the whole story is distinctly more unexpected.     A History of Christianity episode 5 – Protestantism – The Evangelical Explosion   It is easily forgotten that the evangelical explosion has been driven by a concern for social justice and the claim that one could stand in a direct emotional relationship with God. It allowed the Protestant faith to burst its boundaries from its homeland in

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Reformation

A History of Christianity episode 4 – Reformation – The Individual Before God

History / 3 minutes of reading / / By

In the fourth part of the series, Diarmaid MacCulloch makes sense of the Reformation, and of how a faith based on obedience and authority gave birth to one based on individual conscience.     The Amish today are peaceable folk, but five centuries ago their ancestors were seen as some of the most dangerous people in Europe. They were radicals – Protestants – who tore apart the Catholic Church. He shows how Martin Luther wrote hymns to teach people the message of the Bible, and how a tasty sausage became the rallying cry for Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli to tear

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Orthodoxy

A History of Christianity episode 3 – Orthodoxy – From Empire to Empire

History / 1 minute of reading / / By

A History of Christianity episode 3 – Orthodoxy: today, Eastern Orthodox Christianity flourishes in the Balkans and Russia, with over 150 million members worldwide. It is unlike Catholicism or Protestantism – worship is carefully choreographed, icons pull the faithful into a mystical union with Christ, and everywhere there is a symbol of a fierce-looking bird, the double-headed eagle. What story is this ancient drama trying to tell us?     A History of Christianity episode 3 – Orthodoxy – From Empire to Empire   In the third part of his journey into the history of Christianity, Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch charts

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History of Christianity episode 2

A History of Christianity episode 2 – The Unpredictable Rise of Rome

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A History of Christianity episode 2 : Diarmaid MacCulloch explores the rise of Roman Catholicism. How did a small Jewish sect become western Europe’s established religion?     Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch’s grandfather was a devout pillar of the local Anglican church and felt that any dabbling in Catholicism was liable to pollute the English way of life. But now his grandfather isn’t around to stop him exploring the extraordinary and unpredictable rise of the Roman Catholic church.   A History of Christianity episode 2 – Catholicism: The Unpredictable Rise of Rome   Over one billion Christians look to Rome, more

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History of Christianity episode 1

A History of Christianity episode 1 – The First Christianity

History / 2 minutes of reading / / By

A History of Christianity episode 1: professor Diarmaid MacCulloch – reveals the origins of Christianity and explores what it means to be a Christian.     A History of Christianity episode 1 – The First Christianity   When Diarmaid MacCulloch was a small boy, his parents used to drive him round historic churches. Little did they know that they had created a monster, with the history of the Christian Church becoming his life’s work. In a series sweeping across four continents, Professor MacCulloch goes in search of Christianity’s forgotten origins. He overturns the familiar story that it all began when

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They Shall Not Grow Old

They Shall Not Grow Old

History / 2 minutes of reading / / By

They Shall Not Grow Old – Peter Jackson brings to life the people who can best tell the story of World War I: the men who were there, employing state-of-the-art technology to transform audio and moving image archive footage more than a century old.     Alternative video stream   For Fullscreen   They Shall Not Grow Old Driven by a personal interest in the conflict, Jackson sets out to explore the day-to-day experience of its combatants. Immersed for months in the BBC and Imperial War Museum archives, Jackson created narratives and strategies regarding how this story should be told. Using

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WWI – The Last Tommies episode 3 – Battle of Passchendaele

WWI – The Last Tommies episode 3 – Battle of Passchendaele

History / 2 minutes of reading / / By

The Fight to the End tells the story of the terrible battles of 1917 and 1918, and how Britain and her allies turned a looming defeat into victory. As recruitment levels fell, conscription was introduced. One of the conscripts was Harry Patch – here interviewed for the first time – who went on to live to the age of 111, and who survived to be the last fighting Tommy of WWI. These were years when German U-boats attempted to starve Britain into submission and there were serious food shortages on the home front.     We hear dramatic stories of

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The Battle of the Somme

WWI – The Last Tommies episode 2 – The Battle of the Somme

History / 2 minutes of reading / / By

The Battle of the Somme is an immersive account of one of the most iconic and tragic battles in history, told through its last survivors and through families and communities at home who lost loved ones. When the troops went over the top in June 1916, they imagined this was the attack that would end the war. Instead, it turned into the most costly battle of the entire war, with enormous casualties on both sides.     We tell the stories of the officers and the men, the Tommies who sustained life-changing injuries and the nurses who treated them. We

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