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I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope.

Ursla Le Guin (1929-2018)

National Book Foundation speech, 2014

This Week in History:

September 22nd - 27th

Test yourself:

Press the buttons to reveal the answers.
1
Who lost what and why in 1988?
Ben Johnson lost his 100m gold medal after failing a drugs test
2
Who fled where and why in 1998?
People from Kosovo were forced from their homes by the Serbian police and army
3
Who strengthened what and why in 2001?
The Afghan Taliban strengthened their defences against a US invasion
4
Who published what in 1987 and who wanted to ban it?
The British government tried to ban Peter Wright's autobiography Spycatcher
5
What broke what in 1973?
Concorde broke the record for a nonstop flight across the Atlantic by 6 minutes

What the BBC ignored:

September 22 - 1990: Iraq invades Iran.

September 22 - 1993: A Transair Georgian Airlines Tu-154 is shot down by a missile in Sukhumi, Georgia killing 108 of the 132 people on board.

September 22 - 1995: The Nagerkovil school bombing is carried out by the Sri Lanka Air Force in which at least 34 die, most of them ethnic Tamil schoolchildren.

September 23 - 1983: Gulf Air Flight 771 is destroyed by a bomb, killing all 117 people on board.

September 23 - 2002: The first public version of the web browser Mozilla Firefox ("Phoenix 0.1") is released.

September 23 - 2004: Over 3,000 people die in Haiti after Hurricane Jeanne produces massive flooding and mudslides.

September 24 - 1976: The Chinchaga fire in western Canada becomes the largest recorded fire in North American history, sending smoke all the way to Europe.

September 24 - 1960: USS Enterprise, the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is launched.

September 24 - 2013: A 7.7-magnitude earthquake strikes Balochistan in southern Pakistan, killing at least 327 people.

September 25 - 1962: The People's Democratic Republic of Algeria is formally proclaimed. Ferhat Abbas is elected President of the provisional government.

September 25 - 2003: The 8.3 Mw Hokkaidō earthquake, the strongest in 2003, strikes just offshore Hokkaidō, Japan.

September 26 - 2000: Anti-globalization protests in Prague with some 20,000 protesters turn violent during the IMF and World Bank summits.

September 26 - 2002: The overcrowded Senegalese ferry, MV Le Joola, capsizes off the coast of the Gambia killing more than 1,000.

September 27 - 1959: Typhoon Vera kills nearly 5,000 people in Japan.

Would you have swapped any of the events above for any of the events chosen by the BBC?

This Week In History HD Video 32.4 mb
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