Following the death of Chairman Mao and his great Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping became the modern reforming leader of China.
From his wheelchair, his son, Deng Pufang, is today one of the most influential voices in China for humanitarianism and, in 2008, he was part of the team behind the Beijing Olympics.
Fascist Adolf Hitler, of the popular Nazi Party, was democratically elected in 1933. To popular acclaim he led the Nazi Party.
History is full of nasty surprises. Adolf Hitler did his very best not to be a surprise.
In March 1930, Gandhi, leader of the Indian Independence Movement, sent a letter to the headquarters of the British Raj in New Delhi.
Mohandas Gandhi led a non-violent protest against the collection of salt taxes, to facilitate talks on India’s independence.
In 1997 ‘Deep Blue’, an IBM supercomputer, took on chess grand master Garry Kasparov in a classic chess challenge.
The great master was being outsmarted by a circuit board. Kasparov tried to escape but every manoeuvre was futile. There was no way out. The machine had beaten the man.
The Ayoreo are a semi-nomadic South American people who have been isolated from the modern world for thousands of years.
Despite their isolation, they share many traits with their modern human relatives.
Robert Oppenheimer was the unlikely genius behind the atomic bomb, the horrific nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Ancient Hindu scripture. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”.
The heiress Katharine McCormick helped Margaret Sanger to smuggle badly needed but illegal contraceptives into America.
Birth control would become one of the biggest social changes since women gained the right to vote in 1918/20
Andrew Marr - Mankind’s brilliance and stupidity, in equal measure, have shaped the world we live in today. The Age of Extremes.
In the 20th century, our failures were greater than ever before and our achievements astonishing. Mankind found itself in a race, a sprint between its technological brilliance and the risks of its political idiocy.
