A Pentagon-funded radar became Puerto Rico's Arecibo telescope
The US military funded Arecibo in Puerto Rico to study the ionosphere and perhaps track missiles. Astronomers turned it into a famous radio telescope.
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How a botched press briefing opened the Berlin Wall in 1989
The Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989. The BBC and National Geographic trace how a botched press briefing turned months of protest into an open border.
The NPT let five countries keep the bomb, on a promise
The 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty recognised five nuclear-weapon states and asked everyone else to go without. The deal rested on a promise to disarm.
Six countries pooled coal and steel, and built the EU's machinery
The European Coal and Steel Community put French and German heavy industry under one authority in 1952. Its commission, court and assembly became the EU's.
Eritrean fighters took Asmara in 1991. The vote came two years on
Eritrea's 30-year war with Ethiopia ended when rebel fighters marched into Asmara on 24 May 1991. A UN-supervised referendum in 1993 made independence formal.
Tom Stafford spoke Russian in orbit as the space race wound down
On July 17, 1975, an American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz docked in orbit. Years of thawing relations, language lessons and a shared hatch made it happen.
Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace may have helped spread the bomb
Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace speech called for an international atomic agency, set up in 1957. His reactor-sharing programme also gave Iran its start.
The first known state hack began with a 75-cent error
In 1986 astronomer Cliff Stoll chased a 75-cent gap in a lab's computer bill and found German hackers who had sold their access to the KGB.
In 1961, Cuba sent volunteers to teach a million adults to read
Many of the volunteers were teenagers who lived with rural families. By the end of 1961, about 75% of the million adults had basic literacy.