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Rescuing Palmyra’s treasures from the Islamic State group

5/9/2025 • 10 min

In May 2015, when the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria was about to fall to jihadist fighters, a group of men risked their lives to load centuries-old artefacts from the city’s museum onto trucks and drive them to safety. Before their advance to Palmyra, members of the group that called itself Islamic State had already been filmed for social media smashing stat… Play episode

VE Day celebrations
Sinking of the Lusitania
The invention of the automatic electric rice cooker
Conclave: How a new pope is chosen
Snake: Popularising mobile gaming
Ten countries join the EU in one night
The Cu Chi tunnels of the Vietnam War
Surviving the fall of Saigon in 1975
Doi Moi: Vietnam's economic miracle
The death of Adolf Hitler
Staging Othello in apartheid South Africa
Coca-Cola’s ‘New Coke'
The creation of YouTube
Exercise Tiger: Disastrous D-Day rehearsal
The origin of World Book Day
Clearing landmines in Cambodia
The Khmer Rouge take power in Cambodia
The invention of the white LED lightbulb
The Bali Nine drug smuggling case
Germany’s ‘Green Belt’
Oklahoma City bombing
Liberia’s women in white who helped end civil war
The Reichstag fire
The UN retreat from Somalia
Resusci Anne: the world’s first life-saving resuscitation dummy
JFK’s 1963 Ich Bin Ein Berliner speech
The wonder woman of DC Comics
The invention of superglue
The 'ghost town' of Namibia
The father of Ethio-Jazz
Harold Riley’s 'one of a kind' portrait of Nelson Mandela
The suspicious death of Rear Admiral Durović
Goodluck Jonathan’s phone call that changed Nigeria
The Germanwings plane crash
The visionary behind the European Space Agency
The historic handshake in space
In event of moon disaster: 'The speech that never was'
First spacewalk
The rocket that revived Brazil’s space programme
Bardo Museum attack in Tunisia
The Gambia’s ‘Queen of Recycling’
The Capitol Crawl
King Kong: South Africa's first all-black musical
The invention of GPS
How bloodshed in Selma led to the US Voting Rights Act 1965
The Great Toyota War
The US invasion of Panama
The invention of the shopping trolley
The Calais 'Jungle' migrant camp

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