Days That Shook the World is a British documentary television series that premiered on BBC Two on 17 September 2003. The programme features various milestones throughout history. It has been broadcast on the BBC, Discovery Channel UK, The History Channel and Viasat History. The series was also released on DVD by the Polish edition of Newsweek in 2007.
Days That Shook the World (Season 1)
The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II & The Death of Diana (Episode 1)
Writer: Tanya Cheadle
Air date: 2003-11-01
Runtime: 50 min
The Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand / The Death of Hitler (Episode 2)
Writer: Richard Bond
Runtime: 50 min
Overview: 28 June 1914 and April 1945. The Story Behind two pistol shots: the single bullet, fired by a young Serb nationalist that triggered World War 1 and the self-administered shot that brought about the end of Adolf Hitler and World War 2.
The Assassination of Martin Luther King / The Release of Nelson Mandela (Episode 3)
Writer: Srik Narayanan
Runtime: 50 min
Overview: 4 April 1968 and February 1990. How two men - both intellectuals and determined opposers of racial oppression - came to symbolise the fight for equality as their lives for their cause.
Hiroshima (Episode 4) 2.0
Runtime: 50 min
Overview: This episode 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.
The Murder of the Romanovs / The Fall of the Berlin Wall (Episode 5)
Runtime: 50 min
Overview: 17 July 1918 and 9 November 1989. The Murder of the Russian royal family marked Russia's irrevocable move from a monarchy to a Communist state. Seventy Years later, the fall of the Berlin Wall symbolised the collapse of the ideology.
Kristallnacht / The Birth of Israel (Episode 6)
Writer: Nic Young
Runtime: 50 min
Overview: 9 November 1938 and 14 May 1948. Just ten years after the Nazis openly attacked Jews and their property - a huge step on the nightmare spiral to the Holocaust, the 2000 year old dream of a Jewish homeland becomes a reality and the state of Israel is Born.
Tutankhamun's Tomb / Deciphering the Rosetta Stone (Episode 7)
Writer: Carl Hindmarch
Runtime: 50 min
Overview: 26 November 1922 and 17 September 1822. Two days that brought ancient Egypt dramatically to life. In 1822, Jean-Francois champollion cracks Egyptian hieroglyphs. One hundred years later, Howard Carter reads the name on a tomb and makes an amazing discovery.
Black September Hijackings / Lockerbie (Episode 8)
Runtime: 50 min
First Nuclear Reaction / Chernobyl (Episode 9)
Writer: Jane Quigley
Runtime: 50 min
Overview: 2 December 1942 and 26 April 1986. The first controlled nuclear chain reaction heralded the atomic age, but Chernobyl's runaway chain reaction was the first warning. How did the most exciting scientific breakthroughs ever lead to the disaster that the world had dreaded?
The Assassination of JFK / The Resignation of Nixon (Episode 10)
Runtime: 50 min
Marconi's First Transatlantic Radio Transmission / Concorde's First Transatlantic Flight (Episode 11)
Runtime: 50 min
Faster than Sound: Chuck Yeager / Donald Campbell (Episode 12)
Runtime: 50 min
