1929 The Crash ep.1
In 1929 years of booming prosperity ended in catastrophe, it was the biggest stock market crash since record began.
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History
Video documentaries about history of the world
Genius of the Ancient World: Confucius ep.3
Bettany travels to China on the trail of Confucius, a great sage of Chinese history whose ideas have fundamentally shaped the country of his birth for around 2,500 years.
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Genius of the Ancient World: Socrates ep.2
Bettany Hughes’ series profiling the most celebrated thinkers of the Ancient world continues as she turns her attention to Socrates.
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Eight Days that Made Rome: Rome’s First Emperor
Presenter Bettany Hughes explores the day in 32BC when Octavian, Julius Caesar’s adopted son, stole the secret will of Mark Antony, his most dangerous political rival.
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Eight Days that Made Rome: Crossing the Rubicon
Presenter Bettany Hughes explores the day in 49BC when, defying the Senate, Julius Caesar and his army crossed the river Rubicon, plunging the Republic into civil war.
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Tutankhamun’s Fireball
In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun’s necklaces.
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Genius of the Ancient World: Buddha ep.1
Bettany Hughes’s three-part series profiles three very different thinkers – Buddha, Socrates, and Confucius – and assesses the major contribution they have made to different philosophical and religious traditions.  Content-wise, the programs are extremely good: Hughes interviews several experts in Buddhism, classical philosophy, and Confucianism; and visits several of the ancient sites associated with all three of them. Although the arguments are sometimes difficult to follow – especially in the Buddhist program – they are crisply advanced by a presenter who possesses an obvious enthusiasm for her subjects. And yet there is a strange feeling of similarity
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Eight Days that Made Rome: The Spartacus Revolt
The Spartacus Revolt: In 73 BC, Spartacus broke out of gladiator school and started the most terrifying slave revolt in Rome’s history. Visiting Pompeii, southern Italy and the British Museum, Bettany explores the importance and appalling reality of slavery in ancient Rome and how the revolt played a major role in shaping Rome’s political future. She also reveals that not all of Spartacus’s followers were slaves. Bettany Hughes looks at the day in 73BC that Spartacus, a Thracian gladiator fighting for the entertainment of the Romans, broke out of gladiator school and started a slave revolt. The Republic’s
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Eight Days that Made Rome: Hannibal’s Last Stand
Eight Days That Made Rome is a docu-drama that leaves behind the conventional chronologies of Rome’s thousand-year history and brings razor-sharp focus to eight days that created, tested and defined its greatness.
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Shroud of Turin
This year is the 29th anniversary of the C14 dating of the Shroud of Turin that identified the most famous relic in Christendom as a fake. But since then, despite many attempts, no one has been able to determine who the forger was or how it might have been done.
Frank Wild: Antarctica’s Forgotten Hero
Yorkshireman Frank Wild was the unsung hero of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. He was Sir Ernest Shackleton’s loyal companion – following him to the very ends of the earth.
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The World Wars: Extended Edition
The World Wars: Extended Edition tells the story of three decades of war told through the eyes of various men who were its key players: Roosevelt, Hitler, Patton, Mussolini, Churchill, Tojo, De Gaulle and MacArthur.
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