Tue, Sep 9, 2003
The coronation of the young Queen Elizabeth on June 2nd 1953, the first coronation ever to be televised. Despite the death of Queen Mary on 24 March, the coronation went ahead, as Mary had asked before she died, taking place as planned on 2 June 1953. On 31 August 1997, Diana was fatally injured in a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris, which also caused the deaths of her companion Dodi Fayed and the driver, Henri Paul, acting security manager of the Hôtel Ritz Paris. Millions of people watched her funeral.
Tue, Sep 30, 2003
At exactly 5.32am on August 6th 1945, a B29 Bomber, The Enola Gay, took off from a small island in the South Pacific on a clandestine operation. It's mission? To drop a bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, a bomb unlike any other that would change the world forever. This film dramatises the minute by minute events leading up to the world's first ever atomic bombing. Based on extracts from President Truman's personal diaries which show the decision-making process reflecting America's real fear that the Japanese would never give up, Japanese eyewitness accounts of the tragedy in Hiroshima, diaries written on board Enola Gay, and the personal testimony of Colonel Paul Tibbets, the man who led the mission so secret not even his crew knew the enormity of what they were doing. One millionth of a second after detonation, Hiroshima ceased to exist as a city. As estimated 100,000 people were killed and 47,000 buildings flattened. Nobody knows exactly how many civilians died in Hiroshima but its impact will be felt forever.
Tue, Nov 25, 2003
It is 19th October 1977 and Concorde taxis onto the runway at Toulouse Airport. Onboard, the crew are preparing for an historic day - the first supersonic test flight to New York. At JFK airport, protestors are waiting with a hostile welcome, but for the Concorde team and the French and British governments it is a moment that represents the end of an exhausting struggle.