Turning Points: World History

Madin Misan

Turning Points: World History — the moments everything changed. Volcanoes that erased cities, libraries that burned, and summers that never came. Hugo and Clara tell the great stories of world history with documented facts and cinematic storytelling, for listeners in the US and around the world.

  1. 8h ago

    The Ditch That Shrank the World

    For centuries, ships from London to Bombay had to sail all the way around Africa — until a ditch through the Egyptian desert cut seven thousand kilometres off the journey. A French diplomat who could not build a canal, a million and a half men who dug it by hand, and the empress who opened it.

    The Ditch That Shrank the World

  2. 8h ago

    The Night Alaska Turned Black

    Four minutes past midnight, a ship the length of three football fields hit a reef every sailor in Alaska knew was there — and the captain was not on the bridge. Eleven million gallons of oil, a thousand miles of blackened coast, and the disaster that changed American law.

    The Night Alaska Turned Black

  3. 8h ago

    73 Seconds: The Day Challenger Fell

    Seventy-three seconds after liftoff, seven astronauts were gone — and the night before, the engineers had begged NASA not to launch. The story of a rubber ring, a freezing Florida morning, and the warning nobody heeded.

    73 Seconds: The Day Challenger Fell

  4. 14h ago

    The Night a Stuck Valve Nearly Melted Pennsylvania

    It was four in the morning when a valve refused to close — and nobody in the control room knew it was stuck open. On March 28, 1979, a small mechanical failure at Three Mile Island turned into five days of national fear, a hundred and forty thousand people fleeing their homes, and a question America is still answering: how close did we come? This is the story of the night America stopped trusting the atom.

    The Night a Stuck Valve Nearly Melted Pennsylvania

  5. 14h ago

    The Last Helicopter Out of Saigon

    A helicopter on a rooftop, a line of people climbing a ladder into the sky, and a city about to fall. On April 29–30, 1975, Operation Frequent Wind lifted more than seven thousand people out of Saigon in the largest helicopter evacuation in history — and the most famous photograph of that day is not what everyone thinks it is. This is the story of the last helicopter out of Saigon.

    The Last Helicopter Out of Saigon

  6. 14h ago

    The Photo From the Moon That Changed Earth

    What does home look like from a quarter of a million miles away? On Christmas Eve 1968, three astronauts found out — and the photograph they took changed how humanity sees itself. Apollo 8 was the first voyage to the Moon: Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders orbited the Moon ten times, and in a hurried few seconds Bill Anders captured Earthrise, the most famous photograph of the space age.

    The Photo From the Moon That Changed Earth

  7. 20h ago

    The Landing Everyone Said Was Impossible

    At half past six in the morning, on the fifteenth of September, nineteen fifty, a fleet appeared off a Korean port no sane admiral would ever attack. Every expert said it could not be done. This is the story of the Inchon Landing, and the general who did it anyway.

    The Landing Everyone Said Was Impossible

  8. 20h ago

    Why Did America Pay to Rebuild the Countries It Had Just Defeated?

    Why would a country pay to rebuild the nations it had just defeated? On the fifth of June, nineteen forty seven, a quiet American general spoke for twelve minutes at Harvard, and offered a fortune to the countries America had just defeated. This is the story of the Marshall Plan, and the gamble that rebuilt Europe.

    Why Did America Pay to Rebuild the Countries It Had Just Defeated?
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Turning Points: World History — the moments everything changed. Volcanoes that erased cities, libraries that burned, and summers that never came. Hugo and Clara tell the great stories of world history with documented facts and cinematic storytelling, for listeners in the US and around the world.

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